Via NYTimes: Scientists At Work: Antartica: Rocks, Zircon Zapping and a Big Shrimp
... The process begins with unpacking our samples, laying them out to sort, photograph and catalog. Next we cut them all with a rock saw — like a mason’s saw, a rock saw has a circular steel blade with diamonds embedded in the cutting surface to slice through rock samples. We then make slides of the samples or microscopic study. When sliced very thin, to approximately 30 microns (a micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter), most minerals and rocks are translucent and can be observed with a polarizing microscope. We will study these “thin sections” to identify minerals and textures in the rocks that tell us something of their origin, and we will also use light microscopy and a scanning electron microscope to search for the mineral zircon....
