Amber

amber, fossilized tree resin. Amber can vary in color from yellow to red to green and blue. The best commercial amber is transparent, but some varieties are cloudy. To be called amber, the resin must be several million years old; recently hardened resins are called copals.

The tree species that produced amber are now extinct. They included cedars and other conifers and broadleaved trees. The most famous source of the world's amber is the Baltic coast of Germany. Amber is also found off the coasts of Sicily and England and in Myanmar (Burma). In the Western Hemisphere, there are rich deposits in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and the state of New Jersey.

Amber is of interest both for its decorative value and for the ancient, once-living inclusions that it preserves. Capable of being highly polished, it is the oldest decorative substance known. It was familiar to Paleolithic peoples and to the Greeks and Romans, who used it extensively in jewelry. Pliny recounts several instances of its artistic uses. Amber is used in the manufacture of beads, amulets, mouthpieces, cigar and cigarette holders, pipes, and other small ornamental objects.

When rubbed with a cloth, amber becomes charged with static electricity; Thales was familiar with its electrical properties. When destructively distilled, amber yields acetic, butyric, valeric, and other acids; water; and hydrocarbons. Baltic amber also contains succinic acid and is often called succinite. An essential oil (amber oil) is obtained from amber.

Leaves, flowers, insects, and small animals are frequently found in amber. Older fossils trapped in this way often represent the sole specimen of an extinct species. An especially rich bed of amber in New Jersey has yielded over 100 previously unknown extinct Cretaceous species dating back as much as 94 million years. Because of amber's preservative qualities, the DNA of the specimens trapped inside is intact, affording scientists a unique opportunity to study the DNA of extinct species.

Bibliography

See D. Grimaldi, Amber: Window on the Past (1996); G. and R. Poinar, The Amber Forest (1999).

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amber

Fossil tree resin that occurs as irregular nodules, rods, or droplike shapes in all shades of yellow with nuances of orange, brown, and, rarely, red. Milky-white opaque varieties are called bone amber. Hundreds of species of insects and plants are found as fossils in amber. Deeply coloured translucent to transparent amber is prized as gem material, and numerous ornamental carved objects and beads are made from amber. Amber has been found throughout the world, but the largest deposits occur along the shores of the Baltic Sea.

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amber

1. a yellow or yellowish-brown hard translucent fossil resin derived from extinct coniferous trees that occurs in Tertiary deposits and often contains trapped insects. It is used for jewellery, ornaments, etc.

2. a medium to dark brownish-yellow colour, often somewhat orange, similar to that of the resin

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amber [′am·bər]

(mineralogy)

A transparent yellow, orange, or reddish-brown fossil resin derived from a coniferous tree; used for ornamental purposes; it is amorphous, has a specific gravity of 1.05-1.10, and a hardness of 2-2.5 on Mohs scale.

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amber

traditional symbol of arrogance. [Gem Symbolism: Jobes, 81]

See : Arrogance

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(language)

Amber - 1. A functional programming language which adds CSP-like concurrency, multiple inheritance and persistence to ML and generalises its type system. It is similar to Galileo. Programs must be written in two type faces, roman and italics! It has both static types and dynamic types. There is an implementation for Macintosh. ["Amber", L. Cardelli, TR Bell Labs, 1984]. 2. An object-oriented distributed language based on a subset of C++, developed at Washington University in the late 1980s.

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Amber

a mineral from the class of organic compounds; the fossil resin of coniferous trees, primarily from the Paleogenic period. The term “amber” is sometimes incorrectly used to denote any mineral resin of Cretaceous to Neogenic age that resemble amber in appearance but differ from it in chemical structure.

Chemically, amber consists of 76–81 percent C, 10–10.5 percent H, 7.5–13.0 percent O, and tenths of 1 percent of N and S. An amorphous network polymer, it occurs in the form of incrustations, drops, and lenticular molds of “resin pockets” and their fragments, measuring 0.02–50 cm (usually 2–30 mm); the maximum weight of a single sample is 10 kg. Amber is usually covered with a thick opaque gray or brown crust formed from oxidation products. Rarely colorless, it is more often milky white or reddish brown (oxidized amber); it is usually yellow or, very rarely, appears blue or green in reflected light. Jet or stantienite, both of which occur together with amber, are erroneously called black amber.

Amber is either transparent or turbid, and the degree of turbidity determines the following types of amber: cloudy amber (translucent); bastard amber, which transmits light in thin fragments; osseus amber; and foamy amber (opaque). Some amber contains inclusions of fossil insects and plants. Amber yields a specific infrared spectrum, within the 700–1900 cm^–1 region, which makes it possible to clearly distinguish it from amber-like fossil resins closely resembling amber in appearance.

Amber has a hardness of 2–2.5 on Mohs’ scale and a density of 1,000–1,100 kg/m³. It readily lends itself to machining, except for the foamy variety. The fracture is usually conchoidal; more rarely it is even. In foamy amber, it is earthy. Amber melts when heated and decomposes at 300°–340°C. It softens at 140°C when there is no access to air, and fine pieces can be pressed together into larger blocks called pressed amber; turbid varieties are, in this case, converted into transparent ones. Amber exhibits good dielectric properties.

Amber is formed during the specific fossilization (seePETRIFICATION) of resin as a result of the polycondensation of resinous acids and terpenes. The principal conditions for fossilization are prolonged oxidation of the “amber forest” in the soil and subsequent redeposition with burial in coastal-marine, lagoon, and delta deposits with a weakly oxidizing alkaline medium. The principal amber beds are found in Paleogenic deposits along the Baltic Sea; they also occur in the USSR in Oligocene sandy and clayey rocks in the vicinity of the city of Kiev and in the Pripiat’ River basin, as well as in glacial deposits (the Baltic republics, the Byelorussian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR). In addition, they are found in glacial deposits in the People’s Republic of Poland, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and other countries. The largest commercial amber deposit is located in Kaliningrad Oblast (Iantarnyi settlement).

Amber was used for making ornaments in antiquity—the Neolithic period, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was especially widely used in the manufacture of jewelry and objets d’art. As an ornamental stone, it was used in the interior finishing of unique structures, such as the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo (now the city of Pushkin), whose amber wall panels and furniture were removed during World War II (1941–5) by the fascist German troops. Beautiful collections of articles made from amber are found at the Hermitage and the Armory in the USSR. Pressed amber, called ambroid, is used in the manufacture of insulators and inexpensive ornaments. Poor-quality amber—approximately 60 percent of the yield—is subjected to dry distillation, yielding amber pitch, which serves as raw material in the production of varnishes and paints, small quantities of succinic acid, and oil of amber, among other products.

REFERENCES

Savkevich, S. S. lantar’. Leningrad, 1970.
Baltiiskii samotsvet. Kaliningrad, 1976.

S. S. SAVKEVICH