Talk:Hydrothermal synthesis

Contradiction?
The article says this method can grow "large good-quality crystals." Natural quartz crystals can be quite transparent, but the synthetic crystal in the photograph has an opaque-metallic appearance, so it doesn't appear to be of "good quality." Maybe I'm missing something. Could we please add more information to the article, to help a non-expert like me understand this apparant contradiction? 199.46.199.233 (talk) 23:01, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Etymology of term "hydrothermal"
I've been trying to find the origin of the word "hydrothermal". According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word was coined in 1849. Some modern technical articles claim that British geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison coined the word in 1849, and this is consistent with A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles … by the Philological Society (of Great Britain), vol. 5 (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1901),  page 491, which claims that the word first appeared in 1849 in Murchison's book Siluria, chapter 19, page 459. Unfortunately, Murchison's book Siluria was first published in 1854, not 1849; however, prior to 1854, Murchison published a book called The Silurian System, which went through several editions -- none of which contained the word "hydrothermal". Cwkmail (talk) 19:24, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

The word "hydrothermal" doesn't appear in Murchison's Siluria until the 1867 edition, page 459.

So far, the earliest occurrence of the word "hydrothermal" that I've been able to find is in Sir Charles Lyell's A Manual of Elementary Geology …, 5th ed. (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company, 1855), page 603:  "The metamophoric theory [requires us to affirm] that an action, existing in the interior of the earth at an unknown depth, whether thermal, hydro-thermal, … " Cwkmail (talk) 01:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)