摘要或動機

The purpose: To study the basaltic prisms to understand their formation. Tasks: To study chemical and mineral composition, textures and density of basalts of central and peripheral parts of prisms, to reveal the possible difference as a consequence of the formation of Benard sells. Basalt prisms have 6-5-4-face shape with a diameter 10 -50 cm and height of 30-40m. They are divided by transverse fracture in blocks of 20-50 cm. Prismatic jointing of basalts widespread throughout the world. There are many theories about its origin. We decided to collect data to identify the most appropriate of these. We suppose that if the hypothesis about the role of Benard cells is correct then the properties of basalt in the central and peripheral parts of the prisms must be different. If we consider the center of the prism as the center of the cell, where the hot matter rise, spreading out to the periphery and lower in the peripheral part, it is likely that the density of basalt forming in the center must be lower than at the periphery and later crystallization should lead to a slightly more acidic basalt in the middle. We determined the density of basalts of different parts of prisms. And the density of central part basalts was equal to 2.502g/sm3 and of peripheral part basalts was equal to 2.907g/sm3. X-ray fluorescence analysis showed that basalt of central part contain 12,91% Si and of peripheral part only 10,17%. Basalt of central part is depleted of Fe, Mn, Ti, Mg compared with of peripheral. We investigated samples and thin sections of basalts under the microscope MIN-8. For basalts of peripheral part flow texture expressed by the orientation of the microlites are characteristic. In the central part flow texture are poorly expressed but we can see many phenocrysts. Our data reveal a significant and expected difference between the basalts of central and peripheral parts of prism, that are the evidences in favor of the hypothesis about the role of Benard cells in the formation of basalt prismatic jointing.