Geolympics 1: Cycling, minerals & colors

Cyclist at the Giro d’Italia are climbing the Alps for the last few stages before the arrival in Verona. As in other cycling tours, colored jerseys represent the leader in different categories… minerals are colored, too!

Some can even occur in different colors, due to the presence of impurities or microscopic inclusions of other minerals – that’s the case of quartz (SiO2)!

Pink jersey: general leader

Figure 1: pink jersey (1), rhodochrosite (2) and rose quartz (3)

Blue jersey: mountain leader

Figure 2: blue jersey (1), azurite (2) and blue quartz (4)

Cyclamen jersey: points leader

Figure 3: cyclamen jersey (1), erythrite (5) and amethyst (purple quartz) (3)

White jersey: youth leader

Figure 4: white jersey (1), kaolinite (2) and white quartz (3)

Sources: (1) http://www.giroditalia.it/it/maglie/; (2) https://www.wikipedia.org/; (3) whataearth.com; (4) mineralsauvage.blogspot.com; (5) geologyin.com