Optical Mineralogy
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Optical Mineralogy
Optical mineralogy is the study of minerals and Rock (geology), rocks by measuring their optics, optical properties. Most commonly, rock and mineral samples are prepared as thin sections or grain mounts for study in the laboratory with a petrographic microscope. Optical mineralogy is used to identify the mineralogical composition of geological materials in order to help reveal their origin and evolution. Some of the properties and techniques used include: * Refractive index * Birefringence * Auguste Michel-Lévy, Michel-Lévy Interference colour chart * Pleochroism * Extinction angle * Conoscopic interference pattern (Interference figure) * Becke line test * Optical relief * Sign of elongation (Length fast vs. length slow) * Wave plate History William Nicol (inventor), William Nicol, whose name is associated with the creation of the Nicol prism, is likely the first to prepare thin slices of mineral substances, and his methods were applied by Henry Thronton Maire Witham (1831) t ...
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Leica DMRX
Leica may refer to: Companies * Ernst Leitz GmbH, later divided into: ** Leica Biosystems GmbH, a cancer diagnostics company ** Leica Camera AG, a German camera and optics manufacturer ** Leica Geosystems AG, a Swiss manufacturer of surveying and geomatics equipment ** Leica Microsystems GmbH, a German manufacturer of microscopes and other precision optics Other uses * "Leica", a song from the album ''Akeldama (album), Akeldama'' by Faceless * Leica (river), Romania * Leica reel, a type of animatic production method for animation See also

* Laika (other) * Lieka, a former settlement in Ethiopia {{disambiguation ...
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Wave Plate
A waveplate or retarder is an optical device that alters the polarization state of a light wave travelling through it. Two common types of waveplates are the ''half-wave plate'', which rotates the polarization direction of linearly polarized light, and the ''quarter-wave plate'', which converts between different elliptical polarizations (such as the special case of converting from linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa.) Waveplates are constructed out of a birefringent material (such as quartz or mica, or even plastic), for which the index of refraction is different for light that is linearly polarized along one or the other of two certain perpendicular crystal axes. The behavior of a waveplate (that is, whether it is a half-wave plate, a quarter-wave plate, etc.) depends on the thickness of the crystal, the wavelength of light, and the variation of the index of refraction. By appropriate choice of the relationship between these parameters, it is ...
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Calcite
Calcite is a Carbonate minerals, carbonate mineral and the most stable Polymorphism (materials science), polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It is a very common mineral, particularly as a component of limestone. Calcite defines hardness 3 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, based on Scratch hardness, scratch hardness comparison. Large calcite crystals are used in optical equipment, and limestone composed mostly of calcite has numerous uses. Other polymorphs of calcium carbonate are the minerals aragonite and vaterite. Aragonite will change to calcite over timescales of days or less at temperatures exceeding 300 °C, and vaterite is even less stable. Etymology Calcite is derived from the German , a term from the 19th century that came from the Latin word for Lime (material), lime, (genitive ) with the suffix ''-ite'' used to name minerals. It is thus a Doublet (linguistics), doublet of the word ''wikt:chalk, chalk''. When applied by archaeology, archaeologists and ...
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Quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical formula of Silicon dioxide, SiO2. Quartz is, therefore, classified structurally as a Silicate mineral#Tectosilicates, framework silicate mineral and compositionally as an oxide mineral. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth's continental crust, behind feldspar. Quartz exists in two forms, the normal α-quartz and the high-temperature β-quartz, both of which are chiral. The transformation from α-quartz to β-quartz takes place abruptly at . Since the transformation is accompanied by a significant change in volume, it can easily induce microfracturing of ceramics or rocks passing through this temperature threshold. There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are classifi ...
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Thin Section Microscopy Siilinjärvi R216 10840 Carbonate
Thin may refer to: * ''Thin'' (film), a 2006 documentary about eating disorders * Thin, a web server based on Mongrel * Thin (name), including a list of people with the name * Mal language, also known as Thin See also * * * Body shape * Emaciation * Underweight * Paper Thin (other) * Thin capitalisation * Thin client, a computer in a client-server architecture network. * Thin film, a material layer of about 1 μm thickness. * Thin-layer chromatography (TLC), a chromatography technique used in chemistry to separate chemical compounds * Thin layers (oceanography), congregations of phytoplankton and zooplankton in the water column * Thin lens, lens with a thickness that is negligible compared to the focal length of the lens in optics * Thin Lizzy, Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1969 * Thin Man (other) Thin Man may refer to: Arts and entertainment *'' The Adventures of the Thin Man'', (1941–1950), a network radio series * ''The Thin Man'', a 193 ...
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Canada Balsam
Canada balsam, also called Canada turpentine or balsam of fir, is the oleoresin of the balsam fir tree (''Abies balsamea'') of boreal North America. The resin, dissolved in essential oils, is a viscous, sticky, colourless or yellowish liquid that turns to a transparent yellowish mass when the essential oils have been allowed to evaporate. Canada balsam is amorphous when dried. It has poor thermal and solvent resistance. Uses left, Slide of a holotype specimen of a flatworm (''Lethacotyle fijiensis)'' permanently mounted in Canada balsam in 1953 Due to its high optical quality and the similarity of its refractive index to that of crown glass (optics), crown glass (''n'' = 1.52), purified and filtered Canada balsam was traditionally used in optics as an invisible-when-dry glue for glass, such as lens elements. Other optical elements can be cemented with Canada balsam, such as two prisms bonded to form a beam splitter. Canada balsam was also commonly used for making perman ...
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Silicon Carbide
Silicon carbide (SiC), also known as carborundum (), is a hard chemical compound containing silicon and carbon. A wide bandgap semiconductor, it occurs in nature as the extremely rare mineral moissanite, but has been mass-produced as a powder and crystal since 1893 for use as an abrasive. Grains of silicon carbide can be bonded together by sintering to form very hard ceramics that are widely used in applications requiring high endurance, such as car brakes, car clutches and ceramic plates in bulletproof vests. Large single crystals of silicon carbide can be grown by the Lely method and they can be cut into gems known as synthetic moissanite. Electronic applications of silicon carbide such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and Cat's whisker detector, detectors in early radios were first demonstrated around 1907. SiC is used in semiconductor electronics devices that operate at high temperatures or high voltages, or both. Natural occurrence Naturally occurring moissanite is found ...
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Micrometres
The micrometre (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American English), also commonly known by the non-SI term micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI) equalling (SI standard prefix "micro-" = ); that is, one millionth of a metre (or one thousandth of a millimetre, , or about ). The nearest smaller common SI Unit, SI unit is the nanometre, equivalent to one thousandth of a micrometre, one millionth of a millimetre or one billionth of a metre (). The micrometre is a common unit of measurement for wavelengths of infrared radiation as well as sizes of biological cell (biology), cells and bacteria, and for grading wool by the diameter of the fibres. The width of a single human hair ranges from approximately 20 to . Examples Between 1 μm and 10 μm: * 1–10 μm – length of a typical bacterium * 3–8 μm – width of str ...
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Thin Section Scan Crossed Polarizers Siilinjärvi R636-105
Thin may refer to: * ''Thin'' (film), a 2006 documentary about eating disorders * Thin, a web server based on Mongrel * Thin (name), including a list of people with the name * Mal language, also known as Thin See also * * * Body shape * Emaciation * Underweight * Paper Thin (other) * Thin capitalisation * Thin client, a computer in a client-server architecture network. * Thin film, a material layer of about 1 μm thickness. * Thin-layer chromatography (TLC), a chromatography technique used in chemistry to separate chemical compounds * Thin layers (oceanography), congregations of phytoplankton and zooplankton in the water column * Thin lens, lens with a thickness that is negligible compared to the focal length of the lens in optics * Thin Lizzy, Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1969 * Thin Man (other) Thin Man may refer to: Arts and entertainment *'' The Adventures of the Thin Man'', (1941–1950), a network radio series * ''The Thin Man'', a 193 ...
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David Brewster
Sir David Brewster Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order, KH President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, PRSE Fellow of the Royal Society of London, FRS Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, FSA Scot Fellow of the Scottish Society of Arts, FSSA Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, MICE (11 December 178110 February 1868) was a British scientist, inventor, author, and academic administrator. In science he is principally remembered for his experimental work in physical optics, mostly concerned with the study of the Polarization (waves), polarization of light and including the discovery of Brewster's angle. He studied the birefringence of crystals under compression and discovered photoelasticity, thereby creating the field of optical mineralogy.A. D. Morrison-Low (2004) "Brewster, Sir David (1781–1868)" in ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' For this work, William Whewell dubbed him the "father of modern experimental optics" and "the Johannes Kepler of o ...
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Henry Clifton Sorby
Henry Clifton Sorby (10 May 1826 – 9 March 1908) was an English amateur microscopist and geologist. His major contribution was the development of techniques for thin sectioning of rocks and minerals with polarized light under a microscope which was also extended to study iron and steel, his family having been involved in the Sheffield iron and steel industry for generations. He also contributed to the study of meteorites by introducing a method of blowpipe analysis where molten beads were flattened for microscopic study. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857. Biography Early life Sorby was born at Woodbourne, near Sheffield in Yorkshire, to Henry Sorby (1790-1846) and Amelia (d. 1872). His father Henry was one of twelve children of John Sorby (1775-1829) of Spital Hill, Sheffield and Elizabeth Swallow (1761-1829) of Attercliffe Forge, Sheffield. The family had a business in iron production from the early 17th century. An older sister of his father Henry, Anne had m ...
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Petrology
Petrology () is the branch of geology that studies rocks, their mineralogy, composition, texture, structure and the conditions under which they form. Petrology has three subdivisions: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology. Igneous and metamorphic petrology are commonly taught together because both make heavy use of chemistry, chemical methods, and phase diagrams. Sedimentary petrology is commonly taught together with stratigraphy because it deals with the processes that form sedimentary rock. Modern sedimentary petrology is making increasing use of chemistry. Background Lithology was once approximately synonymous with petrography, but in current usage, lithology focuses on macroscopic hand-sample or outcrop-scale description of rocks while petrography is the speciality that deals with microscopic details. In the petroleum industry, lithology, or more specifically mud logging, is the graphic representation of geological formations being drilled through and drawn ...
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