Instructor: George Rossman
A lecture and laboratory course offered with two laboratory options:
a) 9 units with a mineral hand specimen laboratory which gives the student familiarity with the common minerals.
b) 12 units with additional laboratory work on optical microscopy of minerals. The 12 unit option is designed for geology and geochemistry majors who will need to learn how to use the petrographic microscope.
Additional information for students in the class is available here.
Composition of the Earth
Abundance of the elements
Ways of expressing mineral analyses
hexagonal close packing, minor and trace components
cubic close packing, inverse and normal spinels
defect spinel, magnetism, polymorphs, pseudomorphs
coordination polydedra, coordination number, piezoelectricity, Pauling's rules
polymorphs, electron microscopy
solid solutions, end member names, geological environments, technological garnets
chemistry, solid solution, structure, phase diagram for melting, ordering, geological environments
symmetry, Miller indices, crystal faces, morphology, unit cell
nomenclature, phase diagrams class notes, structural origin of polymorphs, incongruent melting, jadeite
chemistry and structure, site distributions, cleavage properties, biopyrobles
7, 10, and 12 Å layer silicates, micas, polytypes, serpentine, asbestos
reconstructive transformation, colored varieties, opal, high pressure polymorphs
chemistry, exsolution phenomena
High Pressure Minerals
methods to generate high pressure, high pressure polymorphs, six-coordinated silicon, perovskite phases, diamond
color, biominerals, metamict minerals