Quartz, made up of the two most abundant chemical elements, Oxygen and Silicon, making quartz the second most abundant mineral on earth.  Variations of quarts properties through impurities and other metamorphic and molecular changes provide us with a wide variety of specimens, all based on SiO4 - many of the samples in the cabinets in front of you are SiO4 based minerals that look nothing like quartz. 

Amethyst, Agate, Jasper, Chert, Chalcedony, Bloodstone, Aventurine, Chrysoprase, opal, Onyx, Citrine - just to name a few are Silicon Dioxide based minerals.  Pressure, heat, impurities, and even radiation change ordinary quartz, into other amazing silicon based gemstones .  So do all minerals start as quartz? well, no, check the links page to find out more. 

If you have more time and have interest in quartz facts, take the time and witch this YouTube video, it's long but very informative. 

Quartz is used in oscillating circuits, ever heard of "quartz precision" on a watch?  Just about all electronics we use today have quartz as part of their circuitry for creating very precise timers and clocks.   When you place an electrical current across a properly cut quartz crystal, it vibrates at a constant frequency, around 32,768 hertz give or take.  That crystal will continue to vibrate at it's resonant frequency, always and forever, that's why quartz is used in clocks and time keeping circuits - the time will not drift like old mechanical wind up clocks. 

This same property of quartz can be leveraged in reverse, if you vibrate a quartz crystal you can get electricity out - now you know how those little click grill igniters work!

Quartz displays triboluminescence. The Uncompahgre Ute indigenous people from Central Colorado are one of the first documented groups of people in the world credited with the application of mechanoluminescence involving the use of quartz crystals to generate light. The Ute constructed unique ceremonial rattles made from buffalo rawhide which they filled with clear quartz crystals collected from the mountains of Colorado and Utah. When the rattles were shaken at night during ceremonies, the friction and mechanical stress of the quartz crystals impacting together produced flashes of light visible through the translucent buffalo hide.