Identifying Minerals In Thin Section

This outcome gives you the background needed to understand the terms used in identifying minerals.

Identifying minerals in thin section. Within the tables minerals are arranged by colour so as to help with identification. Identify and classify common rock forming minerals. Cr mg al rich chromites are realtively transparent and can be dark brown at full thin section thickness.

Identification tables for common minerals in thin section these tables provide a concise summary of the properties of a range of common minerals. Students look at mafic igneous minerals learning to distinguish and identify them in hand specimen. Fine grained rocks particularly those containing minerals of high birefringence such as calcite are sometimes prepared as ultra thin sections an ordinary 30 μm thin section is prepared as described above but the slice of rock is attached to the glass slide using a soluble cement such as canada balsam soluble in ethanol to allow both sides to be worked on.

Chromite is dark brown to opaque at full thin section thickness. If a mineral commonly has a range of colours it will appear once for each colour. The properties of amphiboles micas pyroxenes and olivines and an introduction to mineral properties in thin section dexter perkins univ.

The passion for the optical petrography inspired me to create this website with the aim to provide a tool that would ease the recognition and identification of mineral phases in thin section. Minerals are listed in the order in which they appear in deer howie zussman 1992. They also look at a few of the minerals in thin section.

Chromite is a spinel type mineral like magnetite and has an extensive solid solution in the magnetite composition direction. This assistant is designed to give varying views of the same mineral in differing situations. Remember that all of the igneous minerals can also occur in metamorphic rocks.

The website is designed for students of geology petrography and geology enthusiasts and for those who are interested in this matter. Those shown here are either rare or absent in igneous rocks the. Ruth siddall university college london.