Favorite Thing: Rügen is quite famous for its amber. If you are lucky, you can find some on the beach!
Amber is the hardened resin of coniferous and angiosperms trees. The sticky extrusive mass that comes from a cut on a pine tree is resin. Under the proper conditions the resin undergoes certain physical and chemical changes that turn it into amber.
Each locality produces amber of a distinct type. Often the location of the amber can be derived visually from the amber itself. Baltic amber may have a cloudy appearance, due to air bubbles. The thicker the flow, the more bubbles that remained. The thinner the flow, the fewer the bubbles. Baltic amber also has a high percentage of succinic acid, as much as 8% by weight.
Amber comes in many colors. Typically amber golden yellow, but can also be green, red blue and clear. Surprisingly, it is relatively stable and is insoluble even in many organic solvents. It has a specific gravity of 1.05 to 1.09 and therefore floats - it should sink if the specific gravity is greater than 1. The Greeks believed that amber was the petrification of sunrays; some even felt that it was petrified tears. They prized amber for the magical properties that electricity exhibited when rubbed. The term electricity is derived from the Greek word, elektron, which is also the Greek word for amber. The better quality amber was and often is polished and used for jewelry.
The selective entrapping of insects and other small animals is a fascinating aspect of the fossil. Large animals are often strong enough to break free of the sticky resin, while small insects such as ants, bees, beetles and mites are usually not strong enough to break free from its hold. It is for this reason that animals most often-found in amber are Arthropods.
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on May 15, 2003
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