Texture in geology

Geology

Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

 refers to the physical appearance or character of a rock, such as grain size, shape, arrangement, and pattern at both the megascopic or microscopic surface feature level. This includes the geometric aspects and relations amongst the component particles or crystals which is called the crystallographic texture or preferred orientation

Texture (crystalline)

In materials science, texture is the distribution of crystallographic orientations of a polycrystalline sample. A sample in which these orientations are fully random is said to have no texture. If the crystallographic orientations are not random, but have some preferred orientation, then the...

. The term microstructure

Microstructure

Microstructure is defined as the structure of a prepared surface or thin foil of material as revealed by a microscope above 25× magnification...

 is preferred by some petrographers . Textures can be quantified in many ways . The most common parameter is the crystal size distribution.

See also

• List of rock textures
• Rock microstructure
  Rock microstructure
  Rock microstructure includes the texture of a rock and the small scale rock structures. The words "texture" and "microstructure" are interchangeable, with the latter preferred in modern geological literature...
  
  
• Igneous textures
  Igneous textures
  Igneous textures include the rock textures occurring in igneous rocks. Igneous textures are used by geologists in determining the mode of origin igneous rocks and are used in rock classification...
  
  
• Vesicular texture
  Vesicular texture
  Vesicular texture is a volcanic rock texture characterised by a rock being pitted with many cavities at its surface and inside. The texture is often found in extrusive aphanitic, or glassy, igneous rock...
  
  
• Amygdaloid
  Amygdaloid
  Amygdaloid, derived from the ancient Greek for almond, can refer to:* the amygdala in the brain.* any almond shape.* a volcanic rock texture in which small volatile cavities or vesicles are filled with secondary minerals....