Aegirine, diopside and hedenbergite, oh my!

 Today I feel like a grad student.  Not sure why, except that dealing with this quantity of data and such a large project reminds me more of doing a thesis than simply writing a paper!  Taking on this massive mineralogy/geochemistry project involving the Larvik Plutonic Complex is a thesis unto itself.  It would be a great PhD but with everything else at work that gets in the way, it's taken quite a bit longer than my own PhD took to finish!

Primary brown and secondary green biotite.

Mafic mineral chaos.

Pyrochlore and fluorite in altered perthite.

But I'm getting to the end.  By Christmas, I plan to have the mafic mineral manuscript done and submitted.  Pyroxenes and amphiboles are on the menu.  And what a confused lot they are!!!  Ternary pyroxenes with every composition from hedenbergite to diopside to aegirine and everything in between.  Which is kind of cool to see how primitive in compositions they are.  The amphiboles are the same - calcic through to calcic-sodic all the way to late-stage sodic phases.  With trace element profiles which are just as schizophrenic!

 

Primary amphibole and secondary green biotite.

Zoned pyrochlore.

So, endless hours of crunching data, manipulating data, looking for trends, fucking up spreadsheets, etc.  At least I have an intuitive, instinctual feeling for these minerals, unlike the zircons which I just finished writing about.  Those were a bit of a stretch in terms of my mineralogical-comfort zone, but I guess that's the one way you grow as a scientist.  However, as much as sometimes I despise amphiboles, I like mafic minerals.  I like the fact that they can tell you so much about the environment in which they formed.  Unlike many other later-stage, 'interesting' phases.  These are the meat and potatoes of the alkaline pegmatite world and if you can't understand them, you're lost. 

I think I need more coffee though...

The next two weeks are frantic.  The semester has disappeared without me noticing and in the next week I have to prepare my final exam and lab exam for GEO 2163.  As well as give the last 2 lectures and prep a take-home assignment so that they can redeem themselves and get a few extra marks.  However, on the bright side, once my final exam has been written, I have only 2.5 weeks to do all the marking, etc. and then leave for Thailand!!  I don't plan on going to Sudbury over the holidays so my time will be spent here marking.