[meteorite-list] Questions on olivine in meterorites.
From: Warin Roger <warinroger_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Sep 11 10:43:26 2006 Message-ID: <20060911064645.73171.qmail_at_web26406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Hi Suzanne & Jim, all, A rock with olivine never contains quartz. In the presence of olivine, SiO2 produces pyroxenes. Quartz has a low birefringence, as opposed to olivine. Quartz polarizes in the light gray and white of the 1st order. In terrestrial rocks, it is thus easy to control the thickness of the thin section: quartz cannot be coloured in cross polarized light. It is thus necessary to thin the thin section to remove any colour in quartz. That's what's done for terrestrial rocks. In the frequent absence of quartz in meteorites, I think another reference is used, like the colour of feldspars. >From the point of view of the chemical stability of olivine, there is nothing to fear. Under normal conditions, olivine is a very stable mineral. Its reactivity with respect to water or quartz appears only under extreme conditions of metamorphism. Also, do not forget that olivine is a semi-precious stone (= peridot). At room temperature, the stability of an unprotected thin section will depend especially on alteration of the metal, phosphides, etc., not on olivine, feldspars, or pyroxenes. Regards. Roger Warin www.agab.be (thin sections) ----- Message d'origine ---- De : Suzanne and Jim <suzieandjim_at_yahoo.com> ? : Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com Envoy? le : Samedi, 9 Septembre 2006, 11h43mn 44s Objet : [meteorite-list] Questions on olivine in meterorites. hi all here is a question for those out there that have prepared thin sections without the aid of expensive equipment ( or a university degree in geology ) . It seems to me to get an appropriate standard 30micron thickness without the aid of specialist equipment you have to know exactly what you are looking at in the slide. If you know you are looking at olivine in crossed polarized light then a 2nd order orange would be a good indicator interference colour for the correct thickness. Suppose we have an unidentified material trying to determine if the crystal you are looking at is olivine but can not be sure of the material thickness. You see a good 2nd order orange, so now the crystal could be olivine and you have reached 30 microns , or the crystal could be quartz and you have reached 100 microns. ( or one of a number of other possibilities but lets keep it simple and assume its either olivine or quartz) Whats the trick in determining if its olivine or quartz in this situation? I believe that both olivine and quartz have fairly similar properties both fracture the same and have no cleavage both can be clear in normal polarized light and depending on the thickness of the section can give good 2nd and 3rd order colours in crossed polarized light. Knowing its definitely quartz you are looking at and that there is a lot of it in there means that you can be fairly certain that the material is not meteoritic, well at least in most cases. While I have your attention and talking about olivine, anyone have any ideas about the weathering of olivine in a non-arid climate. I know that olivine may be altered to serpentine and other things and that serpentine does not have the high interference colours of olivine, so its possible that material containing olivine in a moisture rich environment may lose the tell-tale high interference colours we love to look at so much in meteorite thin sections. The questions are, can this alteration to serpentine occur at normal ambient daytime temperature ( say 15 to 30C) and what order of magnitude of time does it take olivine to alter in a non-arid environment. 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years etc? Looking at this question another way, if you have a thin section containing olivine that is exposed to the environment ( i.e. no cover slip on the slide) how long will the olivine keep its high interference colours? How long will the thin section be good representation of the orginal material?. jim Suzanne & Jim __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/attachments/20060911/45abb21d/attachment.htm Received on Mon 11 Sep 2006 02:46:45 AM PDT |
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