“…(9), r is the celestite surface free energy, l is bulk shear modulus, b d is the Burgers vector of the dislocation and K (=1 À m, for an edge dislocation, which is assumed) is calculated from the Poisson ratio m, the ratio of latitudinal to longitudinal strain due to an applied load on the mineral. Using b d = 5.35 · 10 À8 cm and literature values for r = 75.67 mJ m À2 (Hina and Nancollas, 2000), K = 0.6 (Mavko et al, 1998) and l = 17.15 · 10 9 N/m 2 (Mavko et al, 1998), a value of X crit = 0.7 ± 0.2 was obtained. The graph in Fig.…”