Now that Ruri has gotten used to looking at sand to find sapphires, they take a break. With that, they look for something bigger in the meantime.
With the air conditioning broken, Ruri is puzzled as to why Nagi is studying a rock that looks like any ordinary rock, but it’s too advanced for her level. With the air conditioning being out too, Ruri asks, perhaps, they should take a breather. It’s not too surprising, given that Nagi has her cleavage showing, as it’s simply too hot.
With that, they decide to go to a river looking for agate. They went to a tide bed that is visible to find agate. The funny thing is that Ruri had issues finding them, as Imari, of course, wants to relax. Nagi, of course, found one, and the pattern depends on the impurities in the silicon dioxide. When Imari immediately found one, Ruri gets upset and frustrated.
In the end, she couldn’t find one until her foot hit a rock. When she lifted it, an agate, she found one and another one. It’s not a coincidence that there are a good number of jagged rocks. After all, there is a lot of wave energy hitting it, thus forming around them. Ruri found plenty, while Imari found a solid color one, a Chalcedony, which has no bands and is full of impurities. Funny how the number of other varieties of quartz fried Ruri’s brains. While Ruri brought back many, Nagi only picked up three. Yep, it shows how particular she is as she only picks up the ones for her research.
With the AC fixed, Ruri is back in the lab to look at more sand. The next day, Ruri heads out with Nagi to gather more sand. That is, until she discovered a green stone. That is when she finds a small grain, thinking it’s placer gold, but it turns out to be silver in color. She asks Nagi if it’s silver, but Nagi can’t give a direct answer, while Ruri insists it is. Ruri even asks Imari, and she doesn’t think it’s silver either.
They eventually do a sink test, and it sinks faster than copper. Funny how Ruri thinks it’s silver, but Nagi thinks it sank too fast. When tested with placer gold, they sank at the same time. Of course, the only metal that sinks around the same as gold that has a silver color is platinum, which is a rare mineral. It appears around the snake skin-like rock, serpentinite. That is where Ruri realizes she found the spec of platinum, but she didn’t take the rock back.
With that, they went to the mountain to find some placer platinum. After all, they will be in the mantle and only show up near the plate boundaries. That is where platinum and serpentinite will appear. After panning in a river on the mountain, Ruri easily found one. However, Imari struggles as Nagi has found another one.
Ruri has to show how it’s done. After all that effort, they found a good amount of placer platinum. While not as much as the amount of gold they found, given that platinum is rarer, they seem surprised they found it. Even so, Ruri in the end appears motivated to find more.
(Also known as Ruri Rocks)
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