yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

This Russian City is the Amber Capital of the World | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

On beaches like this one outside of Kaliningrad, precious gemstone amber is so plentiful you might simply find it washed up in the sand. Amber is actually fossilized tree sap that's 50 million years old. Ninety percent of the world's supply of amber comes from right here in Kaliningrad. Amber is big business, mined in massive quarries using pressurized water. The most valuable pieces are first sorted by size, then polished with wooden cubes and huge rotating machines to remove impurities, shaped by hands using powerful saws, and then prepared for manufacture to ship out to artisans and jewelers all around the world.

The best of their work over the past centuries is housed here at the city's Amber Museum. Have attitudes towards amber changed in recent times? People started to assemble in Russia in the 10th century; it was as precious as gold. But the attitude is changing because before, the attitude was like, "Oh, it's a stone of my grandmother," because it was very popular in the '60s. But now even local young people who are wearing jewelry sleight of hand to see some of these new styles.

I decided to pay a visit to a local jewelry designer who specialized in making customized new designs for the next generation. They really are cutting-edge. They use 3D modeling to create a design, then use wax models to create plaster casts filled with molten silver. Amber pieces are sorted by exact shades of color, polished to a brilliant shine, and then laser soldered into place. It really was quite impressive.

So, when you come to the amber capital of the world, you know exactly what to bring home as a souvenir. It's the perfect gift for someone you love. [Music]

More Articles

View All
Changes in POV and dramatic irony | Reading | Khan Academy
Hello readers! Today I’d like to talk about differences in point of view in literature. When we analyze the perspectives of storytellers, whether that’s a point of view character, an omniscient narrator, or a narrator that attaches closely to multiple per…
Two Bites for the Pin Wheel | Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks
Yo yo, mother load, huh? Mother load! Oh yeah, the tun of God down here is the same tun of God I’ve been praying to up in Gloucester for years and years. I’m just hoping he shines a little light on me and starts putting some paychecks on my deck. We’re i…
Prepositions of space | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy
Hello, Garans. So we had said previously that prepositions, uh, express relationships between two ideas, right? And we can do that either in time or in space or in other ways. But today I want to talk about prepositions in [Music] space because this is a…
Why it’s EASIER to sell a $3,000,000 house vs a $300,000 house
What’s up, you guys? It’s Graham here. So, I get a lot of comments from aspiring real estate agents who think that the higher the price point, the more difficult the deal. Some like dealing with really high net worth buyers or sellers. Just because you’r…
The Upcoming 2021 Real Estate Collapse Explained
What’s up you guys, it’s Graham here. So today we’re literally going to be talking about my favorite topic in the entire world. And I know you think this might be a setup for me to say, “And that topic is asking you to smash that like button for the YouTu…
Miracles and inductive inference
Atheists and these alike are both affected by the problem of induction. Frustratingly, there’s no rational reason to think that the future will look like the best. The reason we do have the idea that it will, to use Hume’s term, is merely the result of ha…