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Polarizing microscope operating principle Depiction of internal organs of a midge larva via birefringence and polarized light microscopy. Polarized light microscopy can mean any of a number of optical microscopy techniques involving polarized light. Simple techniques include illumination of the sample with polarized light.
These special parts add to the cost and complexity of the microscope. However, a "simple polarizing" microscope is easily made by adding inexpensive polarizing filters to a standard biological microscope, often with one in a filter holder beneath the condenser, and a second inserted beneath the head or eyepiece.
Nicol prisms were once widely used in mineralogical microscopy and polarimetry, and the term "using crossed Nicols" (abbreviated as XN) is still used to refer to the observing of a sample placed between orthogonally oriented polarizers.
The addition of two such prisms to the ordinary microscope converted the instrument into a polarizing, or petrographic microscope. Using transmitted light and Nicol prisms, it was possible to determine the internal crystallographic character of very tiny mineral grains, greatly advancing the knowledge of a rock's constituents.
In optical mineralogy and petrography, a thin section (or petrographic thin section) is a thin slice of a rock or mineral sample, prepared in a laboratory, for use with a polarizing petrographic microscope, electron microscope and electron microprobe. A thin sliver of rock is cut from the sample with a diamond saw and ground optically flat.
A petrographic microscope, which is an optical microscope fitted with cross-polarizing lenses, a conoscopic lens, and compensators (plates of anisotropic materials; gypsum plates and quartz wedges are common), for crystallographic analysis. Optical mineralogy is the study of minerals and rocks by measuring their optical properties.
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The earliest reference to the use of conoscopy (i.e., observation in convergent light with a polarization microscope with a Bertrand lens) for evaluation of the optical properties of liquid crystalline phases (i.e., orientation of the optical axes) is in 1911 when it was used by Charles-Victor Mauguin to investigate the alignment of nematic and ...