Thin Sections of Rocks
Bryanna Huggins
Sandstone Thin Sections
When you reduce sandstone to a fraction of a millimeter, you can see the particulates of sand at a microscopic level.
How is this useful?
We can use them to show us what kind of minerals we are looking at. For example, the sandstone thin section helps us visualize the quartz that it is composed of.
Simply:
First, the rock needs to be cut and glued (with epoxy) onto a microscope slide. Then, you need to sand down the rock until you can observe all of the particulates with a microscope. For sandstones, this will be until the "rainbow" is no longer visible.