Jasper

Jasper, city, United States

Jasper, city (1990 pop. 13,553), seat of Walker co., NW central Ala.; inc. 1889. Jasper is a trade and processing center in a coal and timber area. There is agriculture and the manufacture of sporting goods and furniture, as well as bottling and poultry processing.

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jasper, type of quartz

jasper, opaque, impure cryptocrystalline quartz, usually red, but also yellow, green, and grayish blue. It is used as a gem. Ribbon jasper has the colors in stripes.

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jasper

Opaque, fine-grained or dense variety of the silica mineral chert that exhibits various colours, but chiefly brick red to brownish red. Long used for jewelry and ornamentation, it has a dull lustre but takes a fine polish; its physical properties are those of quartz. Jasper is common and widely distributed, occurring in the Ural Mountains, North Africa, Sicily, Germany, and elsewhere. For thousands of years, black jasper was used to test gold-silver alloys for their gold content. Rubbing the alloys on the stone, called a touchstone, produces a streak the colour of which determines the gold content within 1 part in 100.

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Jasper

The part of the Tomcat servlet container that converts JSPs to servlets. See Tomcat.

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jasper

1. an opaque impure microcrystalline form of quartz, red, yellow, brown, or dark green in colour, used as a gemstone and for ornamental decoration

2. a dense hard stoneware, invented in 1775 by Wedgwood, capable of being stained throughout its substance with metallic oxides and used as background for applied classical decoration

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jasper [′jas·pər]

(petrology)

A dense, opaque to slightly translucent cryptocrystalline quartz containing iron oxide impurities; characteristically red. Also known as jasperite; jasperoid; jaspis.

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Jasper 

a compact, fine-grained rock, composed mainly of quartz, chalcedony, and colored impurities of other minerals, such as hematite, goethite, manganese hydroxides, chlorite, and actinolite. Jasper is one of the most common and most beautiful gems.

On the basis of composition, jaspers are subdivided into essentially quartz jaspers proper, quartz-chalcedonic jasperoids, and feldspar-quartz jasper-like rocks. They are characterized by good hardness (5.5–7.0 on Mohs’ scale), strength, a large variety of colors, and the capacity to acquire a high polish. Various shades of red, green, yellow, and gray predominate; red-brown, black, and white are encountered less frequently. Jaspers are opaque and exhibit a conchoidal fracture. On the basis of texture, they are subdivided into solid, monocolored jasper, striped jasper, multicolored jasper, with colored veins and spots, and spheroidal, or “penny,” jasper. Landscape jasper, a type of multicolored jasper, is especially valuable. Jaspers are deposited in the form of layers, lenses, and strata measuring tens or hundreds of meters in thickness.

Jaspers are polygenous formations. Jasper proper is most often metamorphosed siliceous radiolarian ooze and argillaceous siliceous deposits genetically linked to greenstone effusive rocks and tuffs of spilite-keratophyre formations (for example, the Southern Urals deposits at Kalkan and the Orsk group with Mount Polkovnik, composed of landscape jasper). Jasper-like hornblendes and other jasper-like rocks were formed in the course of contact metamorphosis or silicification of various shales and effusive rocks (for example, the Revnevskoe and Gol’tsovoe deposits and the Leninogorsk group in the Rudnyi Altai). Outside the USSR, jasper deposits are found in the USA, India, and Venezuela.

Jasper has long been used for making fine objects, such as cylindrical seals, jewelry, and amulets, and Florentine mosaics and other interior decorations, such as vases, fireplaces, and columns. It is currently used in fine crafts, jewelry, and the manufacture of mortars, knife-edge bearings, and step bearings.

REFERENCE

Kievlenko, E. la., and N. N. Senkevich. Geologiia meslorozhdenii podelochnykh kamnei. Moscow, 1976.

T. B. ZDORIK