Colours of Opaque Minerals

Colour is the most obvious property that the ore microscopist uses in the identification of opaque minerals. This book sets out to answer the question: Why do particular opaque minerals have colours we see? This includes not only the colour seen in plane polarized light, but also the colours of anisotropic minerals viewed between crossed or slightly uncrossed polars. Beginning with an explanation of the physiological aspects of colour perception and the CIE (Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage) numerical colour specification, the text goes on to examine in detail the physics of the interaction of light with minerals and how the optical properties of sections can be explained in terms of the dispersion of the relative permittivity tensor.