Apatite is derived from the Greek word apate which means to deceive. Buy natural apatite at gempiece.com, the one stop online store for your wonderful gemstone experience and shopping. Apatite is a phosphate mineral Ca5(PO4)3(OH,F,Cl) with hydroxide, phosphate, calcium, chlorine, fluorine and oxygen.
Fluorapatite is basically acid resistant. Fluoride is a basic ingredient of tooth care and toothpaste basic content. It is also pronounced as fluroapatite. Hydroxylapatite is used in pharmaceutical industry and is used as hydrofluoric acid. Apatite is available in many places including Burma, brazil and Mexico. Apatites range from bluish green, blue, green and yellows. Some apatites have rutile content which creates chatoyancy. This gives a cat’s eye effect. gempiece.com has a wide range of apatites and apatite cat’s eye with fine blazing cat’s eye.
Apatite is majorly used in manufacturing of fertilizers due to the phosphorous rich content. It is used in the form of acids in industrial purposes. Apatites are also a common ingredient used in the fluoridation of drinking water and to as a protective coatings for metals to prevent against rust. A combination of fluorapatite and chloroapatite creates fluorescence and is the basic component of fluorescence tubes. Transparent green stones are called asparagus stones and blue varieties are called moroxite. In an article posted by Wikipedia they have mentioned that the Apollo 13 program had collected samples of the moon rocks and some samples had apatite traces. The Hardness of apatite is 5 on the Moh’s scale with a specific gravity of 3.16 to 3.23, the refractive index is 1.628 to 1.651.
