End cut
A piece sawn from the end of a meteorite, with one flat cut face and the natural outer surface on the other side.
When a meteorite is sawn into pieces, the two outermost pieces are called end cuts, sometimes shortened to ends. Each one has a single flat face where the saw went through, while the rest of its surface is the meteorite's natural outside, often with fusion crust, the thin glassy skin formed during the fiery fall through the atmosphere.
End cuts are popular with collectors because they show two stories at once. The cut face, usually polished, reveals what the meteorite is made of inside, such as chondrules in a stony meteorite or crystals of olivine in a pallasite. The back shows how the outside looked when it landed. For iron meteorites, the cut face is often etched with a weak acid by experts to bring out the crisscross Widmanstätten pattern. Gibeon, an iron meteorite from Namibia, is a classic example, its end cuts showing fine, shimmering bands on one side and a weathered brown skin on the other.
You can recognise an end cut by its shape, like the heel of a loaf of bread, with one flat face. Etching and cutting are jobs for trained adults with proper safety equipment, not for children.
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Level: Explorer Ages 10 and up