Did you also collect different minerals in your childhood and try to determine their type? You can learn something new about one of them and admire its beauty and transformations at the exhibition Calcite - Master of Shapes at the Andrej Kmet Museum from 6 August to 13 October 2024.

Calcite forms up to around 1,000 different known shapes, which is unique in the world of minerals. After quartz, it is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust. Its chemical composition is calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). The oldest known description of calcite comes from Pliny the Elder in 79 AD. The name calcite is derived from the Latin word calx - lime.

The exhibition Calcite - Master of Shapes also highlights other interesting features of this mineral. Thanks to the birefringence of light, the fissile shapes of transparent calcite (so-called Icelandic limestone) have been used in optics for the construction of mineralogical microscopes. The luminescence of some calcites (the emission of coloured light when irradiated by ultraviolet light), which is due to the presence of trace elements, is an impressive feature of calcite.

The author's panel exhibition of the Slovak Museum of Nature Conservation and Caving in Liptovský Mikuláš is supplemented by collections of calcite cave decorations from the Demänovský cave system, Veľká Stanišovská jaskyňa and other Slovak caves, from the Czech quarry Vitošová or aragonite caves in Crimea. The panel part with cave decorations is supplemented by mineralogical collections of the Slovak National Museum in Martin - Andrej Kmet's Museum and the East Slovak Museum in Košice.

The exhibition, realized in cooperation with the Slovak Museum of Nature Conservation and Caving in Liptovský Mikuláš and the East Slovak Museum in Košice, will be open to visitors of the Andrej Kmet Museum until 13 October 2024.