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Rock Texture
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How do I use texture to classify a rock?
Rock Texture
In classifying rocks, it's important to describe the texture. Fine-grained means the grains are too small to identify without a hand lens (sometimes you need a microscope!). Coarse-grained means the grains are large enough to identify without a hand lens.
Glassy texture means the rock has no grains, not even under a microscope. If a rock has glassy texture, it's volcanic, meaning it cooled from liquid magma, at or very near the earth's surface, and it cooled too quickly for individual mineral grains to form.
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