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Crystallography ranges from the fundamentals of crystal structure to the mathematics of crystal geometry, including those that are not periodic or quasicrystals. At the atomic scale it can involve the use of X-ray diffraction to produce experimental data that the tools of X-ray crystallography can convert into detailed positions of atoms, and ...
Mineralogy applies principles of chemistry, geology, physics and materials science to the study of minerals. Mineralogy [n 1] is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts.
The way a mineral splits (or “cleaves”), particularly along planes in the crystal structure. Cleavage is generally described by. how well a mineral can be split to produce a flat plane, a process controlled by planes of weakness in the crystal structure. the number of distinct directions of these cleavage planes; the angles between those ...
identifying important raw materials and minerals as well as their names and chemical formulae. describing the crystal structure of important materials and determining their atomic details; learning the systematics of crystal and glass chemistry. understanding how physical and chemical properties are related to crystal structure and microstructure.
Water of crystallization can generally be removed by heating a sample but the crystalline properties are often lost. Compared to inorganic salts, proteins crystallize with large amounts of water in the crystal lattice. A water content of 50% is not uncommon for proteins.
An igneous rock with larger, clearly discernible crystals embedded in a finer-grained matrix is termed porphyry. Porphyritic texture develops when the larger crystals, called phenocrysts, grow to considerable size before the main mass of the magma crystallizes as finer-grained, uniform material called groundmass.
A fluid inclusion is a bubble of liquid and/or gas that is trapped within a crystal. As minerals often form from a liquid or aqueous medium, tiny bubbles of that liquid can become trapped within the crystal, or along healed crystal fractures. These inclusions usually range in size from 0.01 mm to 1 mm and are only visible in detail by ...
In some compositions, at high pressures without water crystallization of enstatite is favored, but in the presence of water at high pressures, olivine is favored. [12] Granitic magmas provide additional examples of how melts of generally similar composition and temperature, but at different pressure, may crystallize different minerals.