Thanks @SashaGarrett - that is really interesting. I do love reading about the semi precious stones.
(I don’t know many responsible adults 
)
When we move back home I’m going to have a go with this, my oh works with a plasma cutter so he has all sorts of safety gear I can borrow.
Looking forward to next instalment.
I have printed this out - got the safety gear, just need the responsible adult 
Thank you for this.
Plasma cutter you say… that could have some interesting possibilities if you think you can sweet talk him into performing some experiments for us. We could try and fake our own tektites or fulgurites.
Yes I reckon he’d like a bit of experimentation - not sure what vulgarities and tektites are though
I think your autocorrect is deliberately misleading the rest of us about you…
They are both types of glass caused by specific events where heat and/or pressure cause the naturally occuring silica particles (or sand as it is sometimes called) to fuse together. Tektites are formed during meteorite strikes (most well known type is moldavite from Czechoslovakia) whilst Fulgurites are formed by lightning strikes (they can have amazing branched structures). I think if he uses the plasma cutter on sand it should fuse the particles together and if we add ferric chloride (or some other source of Fe3+) we might get purple like in amethyst. Hmmmm let me go through my stash of secret chemicals.
How on earth did the autocorrect change Fulgurites to vulgarities 
I did the crackled quartz by accident once on AA Amethyst quite a few years ago, I was soldering wire ends to finish the piece, got the last connection and the beads got a bit to warm, 1 exploded the other 2 were lovely but couldn’t use them on this piece, ended up having to start again using cold connection , then about a year or two after the crackled quartz was in fashion Haha typical
I spotted fake malachite on sale a long time ago about the same time as " turkey turquoise " I think that there are too many ex chemists on this site , but then again I’m one too !
If you go onto Alibaba you can buy the imitation malachite in 8 different colours from the same supplier, they are just adding different pigments to the same base resin - the blue grey version gets called ‘turkey turquoise’ or ‘blue malachite’ but it has nothing to do with either mineral. Makes me wonder what they will fake next.