Gems and Jewels
Get closer than ever before to the natural world’s most highly coveted and valued gems and jewels that have dazzled humans for millennia.
Gems and Jewels is the alluring new app book from the developers of The Elements and Solar System for iPad. Teamed with the University of Chicago Press, and the famed Field Museum of Natural History, Touch Press presents this stunning adaptation from the printed book Gems and Gemstones: Timeless Natural Beauty of the Mineral World.
Co-author Lance Grande, Senior Vice President of the Field Museum, guides you through a visual and scientific celebration of gems—from their natural state to jeweled settings, many created specifically for the Museum’s Grainger Hall of Gems by world-renowned designers.
Gems and Jewels presents the multifaceted nature of these objects at a perspective rarely experienced. Hold in your hands, with the help of your iPad, an Etruscan Gold necklace from Italy, an 8 carat black Diamond, and the Aztec “Sun-god Opal,” carved in the 16th century. Each of the gems and jeweled pieces are fully rotatable and zoom pinchable.
Rather than sitting in a display case at a museum or locked in a bank vault, these rare objects can be enjoyed—larger than life—from multiple angles and dimensions. Watch the faceted surface of a Brazilian amethyst sparkle, see the back side of 37-carat tanzanite necklace set in a sea of Diamonds and come face to face with 30-million year old insects as a piece of Amber fills the screen.
Detailed captions accompany each gem, stone, and jeweled piece, as well as scientific data from Wolfram|Alpha, including classification, group, hardness scale, and chemical compound. Accompanying text unfolds from the upper left corner of the page which explores the roles of particular gems in human culture, geographic origins, and histories of particular jeweled pieces.
Rockhounds, jewelry aficionados, and mineralogists alike, we invite you to enjoy this unprecedented presentation of these exquisite minerals and works of art.
Gems and Jewels includes
- wonderful examples of gems and jewels, including native samples and some of the world's finest jewelry
- informative text describing each mineral's unique features and their uses
- over 300 fully-rotatable and pinch-zoomable 3D objects
- a theme song - we won't spoil the surprise here, download the app!
- live data from Wolfram | Alpha (internet connection required) providing comprehensive information about each mineral.
About the authors: Lance Grande, Ph.D., is senior vice president and head of Collections and Research at The Field Museum, curator in the museum's Department of Geology, and author of over 100 scientific publications. He is also an adjunct professor of biology at the University of Illinois, lecturer at the University of Chicago, and board member of the Chicago Council of Science and Technology. He served as curator and general content specialist for the 2009 Grainger Hall of Gems exhibit team.
Allison Augustyn is a funding specialist at The Field Museum and was previously an exhibition developer and writer for exhibits, including the Grainger Hall of Gems, Maps, the Ancient Americas, George Washington Carver, and Nature Unleashed. She has a background in journalism.
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