Barbara Santos | Instituto Politécnico Nacional (original) (raw)

Papers by Barbara Santos

An interactive computer system has been developed to assist the mineral identification in ore mi-... more An interactive computer system has been developed to assist the mineral identification in ore mi-croscopy. The reference file of the system consists of optical, mechanical, and chemical properties of about 130 ore minerals. The praperties are name, chemical fi~rmula, color, bireflectance, an-isotropism, internal reflection, reflectance at wavelength,~ of 470, 546, 589, and 650 nm. and polishing hardness and micro-indentation hardness. All the properties except reflectance and micro-indentation hardness are qualitative or semi-qualitative. Most of the properties are given as characters relative to the more common minerals. This it~wlies that most of the identification pro~'esses advance on the basis of the comparison between a subject mineral and cae.tisting minerals. For this reason, the system as'ks a user at first to input already identified mineral names. This is quite different from the mineral identification procedures used in petrographic microscopy. To reduce the number of possible minerals, the system presents a series of questions to a user, and the user selects any of the prepared answers according to his observation. The user can also choose any desired question independently of the sequence. The user is expected to he able to recognize same t'ommon minerals, such as pyrite, chaleopyrite, galena, and hematite, without the assistance of the system.

An interactive computer system has been developed to assist the mineral identification in ore mi-... more An interactive computer system has been developed to assist the mineral identification in ore mi-croscopy. The reference file of the system consists of optical, mechanical, and chemical properties of about 130 ore minerals. The praperties are name, chemical fi~rmula, color, bireflectance, an-isotropism, internal reflection, reflectance at wavelength,~ of 470, 546, 589, and 650 nm. and polishing hardness and micro-indentation hardness. All the properties except reflectance and micro-indentation hardness are qualitative or semi-qualitative. Most of the properties are given as characters relative to the more common minerals. This it~wlies that most of the identification pro~'esses advance on the basis of the comparison between a subject mineral and cae.tisting minerals. For this reason, the system as'ks a user at first to input already identified mineral names. This is quite different from the mineral identification procedures used in petrographic microscopy. To reduce the number of possible minerals, the system presents a series of questions to a user, and the user selects any of the prepared answers according to his observation. The user can also choose any desired question independently of the sequence. The user is expected to he able to recognize same t'ommon minerals, such as pyrite, chaleopyrite, galena, and hematite, without the assistance of the system.