Hey Karl, Since you are a chemist (and who knows what else) perhaps you can answer two questions for me. 1. I believe I read somewhere that transparent but colored objects appear to be the color they are because photons of light strike their atoms and excite the electrons which then emit energy as they drop back down to their natural state and the frequency of this energy dictates the color that we see. (more or less. I know the human eye and mind as well as the atmospher do influence our perception.) Did I understand this correctly? I believe I just solved question 2 myself. It took so long to type out and to word clearly that I figured it out just by concentrating on it. I have wondered for a long time why when crystals form (say in a geode) they form a somewhat random mass (like snow) out of which shafts grow. I didn't know how the crystal knew to change their growth pattern from the snow shape to shaft shape. What I think happens is the crystals form all around the interior of the geode simultaneously and grow until they hit another crystal. This forms the random snow but some of the crystals do not hit others and therefore continue to grow in the shaft shape. Well anyway, what about the question 1? Ever heard of that theory before? Greg
