Tuning Gemstones: Can Frequency Really Be Managed?

[Cyrus80772]

I read that quartz crystal vibrates at a frequency of 32768... ( this statement would imply that all quartz is set at this specific frequency )

Then I read that they have to continue to blast the quartz with different frequencies until they get the frequency they want it at... ( this statement would imply that there is a range of frequencies that can be manipulated )

Two questions please...

1. Do gems like rubies diamonds emeralds and quartz have their own unique frequency ranges in general? Like rubies are usually around 10000hz and quartz is usually around 30000hz or something like that?

2. Theoretically could you blast a ruby, diamond, quartz, and emerald with frequencies until you finally had manipulated them all to vibrate on the same frequency?

 

[f95toli]

No, quartz -like all crystals- can in principle (albeit not in practice due to damping) vibrate at any frequency; 32768 Hz just happen to be a nice number (2^15) .
Crystal oscillators are just mechanical resonators ; their resonance frequency will depend on their size, how they are cut etc

Quartz has the nice property that it is piezoelectric meaning it can be easily manipulated by applying a voltage and losses are low meaning you can get high quality factors (and it is cheap).

Most gems are more or less useless for technical applications; they are just pure crystals (e.g. Al2O3) with impurities in them. So unless you can find an application where you are actually using those impurities (e.g. a ruby laser) there is no point in using them instead of the pure crystal. I can't think of any reason why you would want make a mechanical resonator out of an emerald.