Bassett and Grylls exotic semiconductor field trip

The second search for exotic semiconductors was at Bassett and Grylls mine in Wendron. This is a very different location to the Porthtowan trip as it was a tin, rather than copper mine. It is well overgrown but still with quite of a lot of visible infrastructure from ore processing activities that went on here.

This location was initiated by a discovery that hematite I'd found from here previously seemed to have a low resistance in contrast to hematite from elsewhere, so I wanted to see if I could find some more usable quantities for sound making. It's also a site rich in pale brown cassiterite. I also wanted to see if there was any magnetite present here, as I'd noticed magnetic material in the stream previously when searching previously for alluvial cassiterite.

This is quite a difficult site in a lot of ways, any remaining waste piles have either been flattened or are completely overgrown. Due to the infrastructure present I only look at rocks on the surface and on the paths. There is also a lot of industrial process waste (slag) in the ground here, a lot of coal dust too - which coats everything and makes it look like there are crystals everywhere.

Using a magnet I found an extremely magnetic, seemingly crystalline dark rock - which I was pretty happy about as it resembled magnetite. Later on testing it it even provided weak but detectable semiconducting properties with extremely small pyramidal crystals on an exposed area. However when I tried to split it to expose more, I discovered a malleable metallic substance - which means it's probably a by product of the smelting waste found here. It's quite possible that the crystals are in fact magnetite, just artificially created - but that is outside of the scope of this project.