Booking and prices
Prices: Contact Facility Manager
Booking: Contact Facility Manager
Contact information:
Facility Manager: Salahalldin Akhavan
Location: Sem Sælands vei 1
0371 OSLO
Norway
Instruments:
- Thorlag grinding and polishing automat
- Polishing machine
- Diamond microsaw
- Buehler phoenix 4000 polishing machine
- Equipment for impregnation of samples
Description of services:
- Laboratory preparations of a rock or mineral sample as:
- Thin section 30 – 35 μm
- Sections > 35 μm
- Polished sections
What is a thin section; How do we work?
In optical mineralogy and petrography a laboratory preparation called thin section is used. The thin section is prepared out of a rock, mineral, soil or metal sample. A thin sliver of the rock sample is cut with a diamond saw and mounted on a glass slide and then ground smooth using progressively finer abrasive grit until the sample is only 30 μm thick.
The whole process involved with preparation of a thin section requires extreme caution and is time consuming.
A thin section is ready for further investigation in a microscope and when illumination revails specific colours of minerals. This give the viewer more details of the orign and evolution of a rock or the quality of the sample.
Industry using thin sections are for an example the petroleum industry who want to know the grain size and pore space in a sandstone, or the infrastructure or construction industry to investigate the quality of concrete from bridges and tunnels.
The workshop and laboratory can by appointment be used for research activities and/or to assist students at the Department of Geosciences.
About the Thin Section Workshop and Laboratory
Find more information about the laboratory and workshop and what we do in the brochure (in Norwegian and English) below:
From the WS/Lab we have published an online gallery with a collection of stunning micrographs of colourful minerals and rock samples prepared as thin sections.
Visit the online collection and gallery here:
The beautiful thin section collection in the Online Photo Gallery of Thin Sections are prepared and photographed by Salahalldin Akhavan, Senior Engineer in the Thin Section Workshop and Laboratory, Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo.