Healthy Aging Thinking Works

To Keep Your Mind-Body Alive

Sam kindly offered me a rock as I left the store. I chose this one. Real pretty.

Do Rocks Have A Vapor Pressure, I Wondered?

Time to Google

The following made me laugh. Still does.

From MadSciNetWork:

Short answer: Everything has a vapor pressure. It can be extremely small. The lab joke is, “Tungsten’s vapor pressure at room temperature is one atom/universe.” I then wondered about the denominator of this equation; is it per piece of tungsten, or for all the tungsten in this universe, and if it’s the former, do surface area or temperature play a role?

While marketing the latest book, I wandered into a local shop on the advice of a friend. This store, The Crystal Garden, seemed to have little to do with my subject matter, preparing for aging.

What a lovely place Sam’s store is.

Then again, those rocks are really old. The owner, Sam, was friendly, took an interest in the book, which is designed to help those lacking enormous medical budgets, or health insurance.

Sam agreed to take four copies on consignment, to my surprise. He negotiated a reasonable price, and placed them on his small book shelf, saying, I don’t sell many books, but you never know.

It’s true, you never know, when it comes to marketing and human behavior.

Sam even gift wrapped this beautiful example of Red Jasper.

You also never know, when it comes to thinking.

Why would I care about the potential for rocks to have a vapor pressure:

va·por pres·sure ˈvāpər ˈpreSHər/ noun CHEMISTRY

The pressure of a vapor in contact with its liquid or solid form.

My interest in rock is a product of an interest in the origin of life. We (the Biosphere) were apparently derived from interactions between the Earth’s atmosphere and lithosphere, so the vapor pressure of rocks might well have played an important role in the early Chemistry of life.

Rocks sure can be beautiful, whether they are conscious or not.

Looking for a gift for someone special? Try a beautiful rock, from Sam, at The Crystal Garden.

Keep thinking, and you’ll stay young at heart, in spite of the challenges of aging.

What was I going to do next?

I forget.

Oh Yes! Look up Red Jasper:

Jasper, an aggregate of micro-granular quartz and/or chalcedony and other mineral phases, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue. Historically, Red Jasper was known as a stone of vibrancy and endurance, a talisman of warriors and a promoter of justice, protection, and life.

How about that!

PS If rocks are conscious, in a lithospheric kind of way, I wonder what they think about?