Derek D.V. Leung

• PhD Candidate
• Laurentian University

The Magino gold deposit, located within the Michipicoten greenstone belt of the Wawa subprovince (Ontario, Canada), is a past-producing underground mine which has recently begun production as an open-pit gold mine with 4.5 Moz of Au in resources. Gold is primarily hosted within the ca. 2724 Ma Webb Lake stock, a steeply dipping, tabular, multiphase...

Spatial thinking represents an ongoing challenge in geoscience education, but concrete manipulatives can bridge this gap by illustrating abstract concepts. In an undergraduate optical mineralogy lab session, TotBlocks were used to illustrate how crystal structures influence properties such as cleavage and pleochroism. More abstracted properties, e....

Digital imaging of thin sections is an integral part of contemporary geoscience research. Images taken under the petrographic microscope (i.e., photomicrographs) capture mineralogical and textural features—e.g., modal mineralogy, grain size, and fabrics—that can be quantified and interpreted via digital image analysis. However, it can be challengin...

Spatial thinking represents an on-going challenge in geoscience education, but concrete manipulatives can bridge the gap by illustrating abstract concepts. In an undergraduate optical mineralogy lab session, TotBlocks were used to illustrate how mineral structures influence optical properties such as cleavage and pleochroism. More abstracted proper...

Many rock-forming chain and sheet silicate minerals, i.e., pyroxenes, amphiboles, micas, and clay minerals, are built from shared chemical building blocks known as T-O-T modules. Each module consists of two opposing chains of vertex-sharing silica tetrahedra (T), which vertically sandwich a ribbon of edge-sharing metal–oxygen octahedra (O) in a T-O...

Catastrophic failure in brittle, porous materials initiates when smaller-scale fractures localise along an emergent fault zone in a transition from stable crack growth to dynamic rupture. Due to the rapid nature of this critical transition, the precise micro-mechanisms involved are poorly understood and difficult to image directly. Here, we observe...

The duopoly of curling stone sources suitable for international competition (Ailsa Craig, Firth of Clyde, Scotland and Trefor, Llŷn Peninsula, North Wales) has led to a long-held paradigm that the rocks from these localities are geologically unique. To evaluate this paradigm, we provide the first comprehensive, detailed analyses of the geological,...

Catastrophic failure in brittle, porous materials initiates when smaller-scale fractures localize along an emergent failure plane or 'fault' in a transition from stable crack growth to dynamic rupture. Due to the extremely rapid nature of this critical transition, the precise micro-mechanisms involved are poorly understood and difficult to capture....

Windmountainite, ideally □Fe3+2Mg2□2Si8O20(OH)2(H2O)4·4H2O, is a new mineral species and member of the palygorskite group discovered as orange-brown, radiating aggregates that commonly fill vesicles (average 1.5 × 2.5 mm) within a phonolite dike at Wind Mountain, Otero County, New Mexico, USA. The mineral develops as tightly bound bundles (up to 0....