Crystals are precious gemstones known to foster mental clarity, spiritual growth and overall well-being. Crystals have also long been considered effective healing stones that help strengthen auras.

Clarity is one of the Four Cs of gem quality, measuring whether or not a gemstone is free from internal features called inclusions and external flaws known as blemishes.

Identifying Crystals

No matter if you’re a collector or just someone with an appreciation of crystals, understanding their authenticity requires understanding its role in terms of clarity. One of three critical characteristics that help identify genuine from imitation crystals, clarity is an invaluable aspect that will aid your journey into crystal collecting. Gaining this understanding early on will make the experience far more fulfilling and profitable!

Recognizing crystals is an invaluable skill that will prove useful in many creative pursuits, including costume design, performance art, jewelry making and nail art. Recognizing them requires familiarity with their shapes and energies – specifically cubic lattices with three equal axes or six-sided symmetry can all serve as indicators.

Crystals are significantly clearer than glass, often creating prism effects when light passes through them and producing long and drawn-out musical tones when touched, unlike glass’s quick thud sound produced when touched. Tapping one also produces different tones than tapping glass.

Black Light Test

Black lights emit harmless ultraviolet (UV) light that is invisible to human eyes, while certain materials absorb it and reflect it back out with different wavelengths – this process is called luminescence. Forensic scientists utilize black lights at crime scenes to identify materials based on their atomic makeup; but you don’t have to be an expert to use one as a collector tool – crystal looks clearer under black light thanks to its higher lead content and sometimes creates prism effects when seen through.

Forensic black lighting can help detect counterfeit items with modern printing or card stock, like baseball cards. Reprints will typically fluoresce much brighter or differently than their genuine counterparts and may include other materials that fluoresce such as laundry detergent granules, vaseline or some plastics.

Tapping Test

Many people utilize the Tapping Test as a method for identifying crystal clarity. To conduct it, place your finger over the crystal and tap it several times with it; genuine crystals should feel cool to touch and feature natural irregularities; in contrast, fake ones have uniform appearance and may feel cold to touch; additionally they won’t contain air bubbles.

The app records information from individual tests and exports it as a file with 4 columns: moment of tap, spatial x coordinates of tap location, spatial y coordinates of tap location and code for off-line analysis. Figures 1 and 2 display linear-fit data which shows that finger tapping movement was consistent over 10 seconds of test.

Figure 3 depicts a best-fit mathematical function which indicates that finger-tapping movements exhibit biphasic behavior, including early fatigue phase and late adaptation phase. Further investigation will need to be completed in order to validate this assumption.

Prism Test

Prisms can be used in various vision conditions and circumstances, including helping with double vision, treating concussions/traumatic brain injuries and eye surgeries such as cataract removal.

Wearable technology can also assist those suffering from neck conditions, such as severe ankylosing spondylitis, by improving their posture and making movement easier. They’re often employed in reading glasses used by those living with macular degeneration or blurriness caused by certain eye diseases.

A prism is composed of two right-angled prisms made from different materials like quartz or calcite glued together at an acute angle to each other, creating two right-angled reflections of light when light enters it. Prism strength can be measured in “centrads”, with plus or minus strengths depending on whether it’s a Nicol, Wollaston or Maddox Rod prism; when performing a cover test on one eye and looking at its images to determine an ideal prism prescription.