Sparkling Aventurine Stone

Passing by the counters with various decorations, you probably paid attention to the sparkling stones of brown color, which play beautifully in the light, casting with gold. The sellers call these stones aventurine, but the question is - is what they sell to us exactly aventurine? Let's get it right.
To begin with, we clarify that aventurine is called a rock, which is a type of quartzite. It is characterized by a fine or fine-grained structure and mainly quartz composition. A distinctive feature of aventurine is the presence in it of numerous small inclusions of mica (most often) or hematite and chlorite (rarely), which create a sparkling effect when light hits the stone. This rock is metamorphic, since its formation is associated with compaction and recrystallization of sandy-clay sediments. Aventurine deposits are known in the USA, Norway, Australia, Austria, India, Spain, Chile, as well as in Russia in the Southern Urals. The color of aventurines is due to impurities and inclusions, the most common are brown, green and red-brown varieties, less often pink, blue and black. Mostly quartz composition determines a rather high hardness of aventurine. Together with the ease of polishing and decorative qualities, this contributed to the widespread use of aventurine in the jewelry industry.
However, the huge amount of what we see on the counter is not an adventure. Under this name, we are often sold the so-called "aventurine glass", which just looks like aventurine, but in fact it is tinted glass with the addition of metal oxides or just copper filings. How to distinguish a fake? To begin with, hardness - glass is softer than natural quartzite. Next, you should pay attention to the color of the stone - too saturated color and an abundance of sparkles should also give rise to suspicion. Also sometimes in imitations one can observe zoning and regularity of arrangement of spangles, while in natural samples they always randomly fill the volume of stone.