Dear Christian (and others) your reply about preferred orientation probabaly not being a problem with a cubic mineral is of interest to me.
This is something I have wondered about in the past because of observations I have made on common salt, so I thought I would contribute to this discussion in the hope that I can learn something. I am not a crystallographer so my thinking about this may be completely wrong, but if you pack a mineral like salt into a holder such that all the little cubes lined up (to some extent) in a regular way, would this show up as preferred orientation in an XRD pattern? or does it make no difference because the mineral is cubic? I pose my question because I have observed apparently different XRD patterns for salt when prepared in different ways. I guess my broader question is can cubic minerals show preferred orientation? I had convinced myself they can, your comments have now made me wonder about this again. sincerely, steve Dr Stephen Hillier Macaulay Institute Craigiebuckler ABERDEEN AB15 8QH UK Tel. +44 (0) 1224 318611 Fax. +44 (0) 1224 311556 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.macaulay.ac.uk
