Identifying Unknown Composition Using Match feature

[JohnF]

Today I have an outside user, who is looking at some metamorphosed iron formation sample. The user had done some optical work and assumed this was some stilpnomelane...but when she probed it, it came out atomically Al:Si:O 1:1:5...and we couldn't recall what mineral this was. So I wanted to use the MATCH button in PfE...but it was greyed out! I came to the forum and found nothing there to help, though in this topic John showed some screen shots but not exactly related to using MATCH for a quant analysis, and in the screen shot the MATCH button was also greyed out....what to do...punt, I retried the Analyze button one more time and now the MATCH button came active...we picked DHZ and after 10 seconds out spit the list of possible matches, with kaolinite having the lowest difference ("vector") factor. Cool! Now we are looking for another match....not kaolinite in dhz or dana, trying american mineralogist...but there are 8274 possible matchs! John, is there some way to enter in a guessed at mineral? so it first goes to that mineral composition? Would save a lot of time waiting...we re now at 2000 out of 8274, after a minute... we think THIS analysis's stilpnomelane but have to wait 4-5 minutes to see if this is it....

[John Donovan]

Today I have an outside user, who is looking at some metamorphosed iron formation sample. The user had done some optical work and assumed this was some stilpnomelane...but when she probed it, it came out atomically Al:Si:O 1:1:5...and we couldn't recall what mineral this was. So I wanted to use the MATCH button in PfE...but it was greyed out! I came to the forum and found nothing there to help, though in this topic John showed some screen shots but not exactly related to using MATCH for a quant analysis, and in the screen shot the MATCH button was also greyed out....what to do...punt, I retried the Analyze button one more time and now the MATCH button came active...

Hi John,
The Match button is grayed out until you click the Analyze button.   It has to have an analysis to match!   If that wasn't obvious enough, I can leave the button always enabled and change the code to force an analysis each time the Match button is pressed.

...we picked DHZ and after 10 seconds out spit the list of possible matches, with kaolinite having the lowest difference ("vector") factor. Cool! Now we are looking for another match....not kaolinite in dhz or dana, trying american mineralogist...but there are 8274 possible matchs! John, is there some way to enter in a guessed at mineral? so it first goes to that mineral composition? Would save a lot of time waiting...we re now at 2000 out of 8274, after a minute... we think THIS analysis's stilpnomelane but have to wait 4-5 minutes to see if this is it....

Are you complaining that there are too many minerals?   Blame a mineralogist!   

What do you mean by "is there some way to enter in a guessed at mineral?"   You can load the American Mineralogist database in the Standard application any time you like and look at or search for any mineral in there.  Is that what you mean?
john

[Anette von der Handt]

Hi,

I would vote against having the Match button do an automatic analysis. In the case that there are different phases grouped in an unknown I like using the "analyze selected line" option to isolate the analysis of interest.

John,

for situations like this, I sometimes like to use the Athena Database instead to search for matches: http://athena.unige.ch/athena/mineral/search.html

It allows me to exclude certain elements from the search. It obviously is not a good replacement for what you are looking for but maybe in combination, it helps to get closer to a good match.

[John Donovan]

I would vote against having the Match button do an automatic analysis. In the case that there are different phases grouped in an unknown I like using the "analyze selected line" option to isolate the analysis of interest.

Good point.  I'll leave it as is then.
john

[John Donovan]

for situations like this, I sometimes like to use the Athena Database instead to search for matches: http://athena.unige.ch/athena/mineral/search.html

It allows me to exclude certain elements from the search. It obviously is not a good replacement for what you are looking for but maybe in combination, it helps to get closer to a good match.

Interesting.   Too bad they don't have a compositional search- which is why I wrote the match code in PFE.  I guess John could always get a faster computer if his searches in the Amer. Min. database are taking too long!