• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.17-26
• /
• 2008

The Madagascar garnets wear mainly found as a porphyroblast in gneiss and classified into rhodolite, purple almandine, and brown almandine based on compositional characteristics and color. UV-visible analysis strong absorption bands, 400, 428, 504, 521, and 572 nm, were observed for rhodolite and purple almandine, and main absorption bands of 433 and 502 nm observed for brown almandine. For FT-IR analysis a strong absorption band of $640\;cm^{-1}$ was observed for rhodolite, two strong bands of 628 and $651\;cm^{-1}$ observed for brown almandine, and two weak absorption bands of 635 and $653\;cm^{-1}$ observed for purple almandine. Single distinct absorption band, $3552\;cm^{-1}$, was observed only for rhodolite. It is possible to distinguish rhodolite from purple or brown almandine by considering overall characteristics of the rhodolite such as color, RI, UV-visible absorption, FTIR absorption etc.