[meteorite-list] Heating tektites - warning

From: mark ford <markf_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:32:56 2004
Message-ID: <6CE3EEEFE92F4B4085B0E086B2941B310144A0_at_s-southern01.s-southern.com>

I heated an indochinite once, to see if it would melt and it shattered!!
luckily I was wearing safety glasses!! So be carefull.

 If you're going to melt one I advise crushing it into to crumbs/powder
first. I guess the fact that it shatters implies it originally cooled
very quickly, and the 'glass' must have been under considerable
stress/tension, so this may offer some clue on how they formed and
cooled, but then maybe just the small ones cooled fast?

A thin section of tektite put under polarized filter would be
interesting, since you would see the stress lines as colours would you
not? A similar technique used to check sheet glass and plastic for
area's of stress.


Mark Ford
Received on Mon 29 Mar 2004 03:13:04 AM PST