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GEOTHERMOMETRY
FLUID INCLUSION
1. PRIMARY- inclusions formed in growing crystals, no leakage. It dispersed through a mineral with no
clear relationship to any structure that would permit escape or entry of gas or liquid.
2. SECONDARY- with fracture and sealed again, records conditions of later hydrothermal stage. Formed
after primary crystallization
3. PSEUDOSECONDARY- looks like secondary but may not be if the host crystal was fractured as
the crystal was growing
Synthesis of minerals
✓ The preparation of phase diagram by synthetic melting of hydrothermal studies of pertinent
assemblages is carried out by placing measured amount of elements in controlled atmospheres to
produce quantifiable assemblages of reaction products.
Determination of melting point
✓ The temperature at which a mineral melt normally at atmospheric pressure, is assumed to mark
the upper limit of stability for that mineral.
Determination of inversion point and stability ranges
✓ An extension of the determination of melting points is the study of multicomponent systems such
as Cu-Fe-As system
Determination of exsolution points
✓ High temperature tends to promote disorder in mineral structure
Study of mineral textures and habits
Determination of electrical conductivity of minerals
✓ Assuming that minerals formed at higher temperatures have fewer structural defects than those
formed at low temperatures, and that crystallographic imperfections reduce electrical
conductivity, Smith (1947) concluded that the relative electrical properties of conductive minerals
should be a measure of their crystallization temperatures.
Thermoluminescence
✓ The property of a substance to emit visible light when it is heated; also known as “frozen-in-
phosphorescence”
GEOBAROMETRY
General statements:
✓ Luckily, temperature changes are more significant in ore systems than pressure
4 geobarometers used:
ISOTOPE STUDIES
RADIOISOTOPES
- Radioactivity studies can therefore be used geochemically or to study the geochmeistries of element
separations, that is, source considerations.
Rubidium-Strontium
- Method of estimating the age of rocks, minerals, and meteorites from measurements of the
amount of the stable isotope strontium-87 formed by the decay of the unstable isotope
rubidium-87 that was present in the rock at the time of its formation.
Uranium-Thorium-Lead
- Also called common-lead dating
- method of establishing the time of origin of a rock by means of the amount of common lead it
contains
Common lead is any lead from a rock or mineral that contains a large amount of lead and a small
amount of the radioactive progenitors of lead, i.e., the uranium isotopes uranium-235 and
uranium-238 and the thorium isotope thorium-232
The simplest lead isotope studies depend on several assumptions (Richards, 1971):
1. At the time of the formation of the Earth, there was a single set of lead isotope ratios throughout the
Earth’s mass, the so called primitive lead.
2. Since then, all lead has been held in one or more closed systems, the mantle, the crust, and so on,
with proportions of uranium, thorium, and lead changed only by radioactive decay.
3. From time to time “batches” of lead-bearing material have been removed from the source to form
ore deposits, with negligible effect on what was left.
4. Ore lead removed were not contaminated by other leads while traveling to the site of deposition;
they reflect “frozen” original isotope abundances and ratios.