Hello! My name is Garrett Barmore.
I'm the curator here at the
W.M. Keck Earth Science and Mineral Engineering Museum.
and welcome to Mineral Monday.
Let me show you around.
[Mineral Monday with Garrett Barmore] 
[Thank you to our sponsor, Newmont]
Today we're talking about
native silver. 
Now, silver, as many of you know
is an element.
You can find it on the periodic table
listed as Ag.
And when silver forms,
many times it is formed inside of rocks
on sometimes a microscopic level.
But sometimes you get these large concentrations of silver
that we call native silver.
It's kind of like a silver nugget,
similar to a gold nugget.
So, silver crystlas are relatively rare.
You generally don't find silver crystals.
What you would generally find is what's called
silver wire or wire silver.
And this piece from Mexico is wire silver
Asyou can see,
it looks like a whole bunch of wires that have been compressed.
A rarer formation of silver
can be found in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Now this almost looks like a silver flower, 
its quite beautiful.
Now,  when seeing this large concentration of silver
you might think that this is an important source of silver mining.
However, when mines and miners
are looking to mine silver on an industrial scale
they actually look for led silver minerals
And the reason for this is
there's just more of it
it's easier to mine,
and it's a higher concentration of silver.
If you want to see our native silver specimens
you can see the Keweenaw specimen in case number 15
on the main floor of the main gallery
and the wire silver specimen in case 38,
once again, on the main floor of the main gallery.
And I'll see you next Mineral Monday.
[College of Science: Live a life of discovery
Thank you to our sponsor, Newmont]
