#thin section

to anyone who ever said rocks aren’t cool, you’re wrong.

Recently I've been a bit unmotivated with my geology major, but metamorphic petrology is here to cheer me up

Here’s a fun one, a piece of dunite. It’s mostly olivine crystals. The olivine in thin section image shows some vibrant colors due to its second order birefringence (the range of colors olivine shows have high saturation). It’s fun going through these pictures, it’s been a few years since I’ve worked with mineral thin sections.

Muscovite thin section from mineralogy lab today

Andesite host rock with calcite vein. Clasts of the host rock are present within the vein. 40X magnification, XPL.

This post was inspired by a much cooler geologist @friedmagazinebouquet

Granite thin section under XPL