Meerschaum - Tobacco Pipe Definitions - Briar Pipe Smoking Terms - Pipe Tobacco Glossary

Pipe Smoking Terminology - Pipe Tobacco Definitions

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Meerschaum		"Meerschaum" is a German word meaning literally, "sea-foam," alluding to the belief that it was the compressed whitecaps of waves, just as it is said in mythology for the goddess of beauty - Aphrodite. Meerschaum is a hydrated magnesium silicate. Magnesium doesn't make it strong and the hydrogen and oxygen don't make it cool. It is the crystalline structure; the arrangement of the magnesium, silicon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms in a rigid crystalline structure that makes sepiolite (the clay mineral that is identified by pipe smokers as meerschaum) so good for smoking. The average size of the meerschaum blocks extracted from the clay is about the size of a grapefruit.

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