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Crystal twinning occurs when two or more adjacent crystals of the same mineral are oriented so that they share some of the same crystal lattice points in a symmetrical manner. The result is an intergrowth of two separate crystals that are tightly bonded to each other.
The contact goniometer was the first instrument used to measure the interfacial angles of crystals. The International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) gives the following definition: "The law of the constancy of interfacial angles (or 'first law of crystallography') states that the angles between the crystal faces of a given species are constant, whatever the lateral extension of these faces ...
Upon further heating to more than 1,050 °C (1,920 °F) the crystal symmetry changes from triclinic to monoclinic; this variant is also known as 'monalbite'. [8] Albite melts at 1,100–1,120 °C (2,010–2,050 °F). [9] Oftentimes, potassium can replace the sodium characteristic in albite at amounts of up to 10%.
Orthoclase crystal twinning from the Organ Mountains in New Mexico. Orthoclase is a common constituent of most granites and other felsic igneous rocks and often forms huge crystals and masses in pegmatite. Typically, the pure potassium endmember of orthoclase forms a solid solution with albite, the sodium endmember (NaAlSi 3 O 8) of plagioclase.
Crystal powder is obtained by grinding crystals, resulting in powder particles, made up of one or more crystallites. Both polycrystals and crystal powder consist of many crystallites with varying orientation. Crystal phases are defined as regions with the same crystal structure, irrespective of orientation or twinning. Single and twinned ...
Spinel law contact twinning. A single crystal is shown on the left with the composition plane in red. At right, the crystal has effectively been cut on the composition plane and the front half rotated by 180° to produce a contact twin. This creates reentrants at the top, lower left, and lower right of the composition plane. [19]
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 ...
The mosaic crystal model goes back to a theoretical analysis of X-ray diffraction by C. G. Darwin (1922). Currently, most studies follow Darwin in assuming a Gaussian distribution of crystallite orientations centered on some reference orientation. The mosaicity is commonly equated with the standard deviation of this distribution.