Inorganic materials, including gemstones, also have characteristic vibrational energies in the infrared that can be used for identification. For infrared spectroscopy, absorptions associated with the vibrations of the crystal structure (lattice vibrations) are characteristic of the given combination of atoms constituting the gemstone. Natural turquoise $CuAl_6(PO_4)_4cdot(OH)_8cdot 5H_2O$ can be distinguished easily from its common substitutes in the infrared range 2000~450$ extrm{cm}^{-1}$ by features in the mid-infrared. Gilson turquoise, which is a synthetic, exhibits a significantly smoother pattern when compared with natural turquoise, because of a different state of aggregation. Also, because the natural turquoise and gibbsite are so different chemically, their patterns are very different. The technique, which is infrared spectroscopy, is nondestructive and, with Fourier transform instrumentation, extremely rapid.