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Subsequently, the name was given to any igneous rocks with large crystals. The adjective porphyritic now refers to a certain texture of igneous rock regardless of its chemical and mineralogical composition or its color. Its chief characteristic is a large difference in size between the tiny matrix crystals and the much larger phenocrysts.
The individual crystals in an aphanitic igneous rock are not distinguishable to the naked eye. Examples of aphanitic igneous rock include basalt , andesite , and rhyolite . Glassy or vitreous textures occur during some volcanic eruptions when the lava is quenched so rapidly that crystallization cannot occur.
Recognizing the habit can aid in mineral identification and description, as the crystal habit is an external representation of the internal ordered atomic arrangement. [1] Most natural crystals, however, do not display ideal habits and are commonly malformed. Hence, it is also important to describe the quality of the shape of a mineral specimen:
Jenny Pickworth Glusker, a British scientist, co-authored Crystal Structure Analysis: A Primer, [137] first published in 1971 and as of 2010 in its third edition. Eleanor Dodson , an Australian-born biologist, who began as Dorothy Hodgkin's technician, was the main instigator behind CCP4 , the collaborative computing project that currently ...
Epitaxy can involve single-crystal structures, although grain-to-grain epitaxy has been observed in granular films. [1] [2] For most technological applications, single-domain epitaxy, which is the growth of an overlayer crystal with one well-defined orientation with respect to the substrate crystal, is preferred. Epitaxy can also play an ...
In crystallography, the hexagonal crystal family is one of the six crystal families, which includes two crystal systems (hexagonal and trigonal) and two lattice systems (hexagonal and rhombohedral). While commonly confused, the trigonal crystal system and the rhombohedral lattice system are not equivalent (see section crystal systems below). [ 1 ]
In geology, texture or rock microstructure [1] refers to the relationship between the materials of which a rock is composed. [2] The broadest textural classes are crystalline (in which the components are intergrown and interlocking crystals), fragmental (in which there is an accumulation of fragments by some physical process), aphanitic (in which crystals are not visible to the unaided eye ...
Porphyritic texture in a granite. This is an intrusive porphyritic rock. The white, square feldspar phenocrysts are much larger than crystals in the surrounding matrix; eastern Sierra Nevada, Rock Creek Canyon, California. A porphyritic volcanic sand grain, as seen under the petrographic microscope. The large grain in the middle is of a much ...