Manual of mineralogy

Mineralogy is an integral part of the undergraduate education of geologists and it may also be part of a curriculum in materials science. One or several courses in mineralogy are generally required in a geology or earth science undergraduate program. These courses are meant as prerequisites to upper-level courses in petrology, geochemistry, economic geology, or mineralogy itself. The undergraduate student's first course dealing with mineralogy must convey the concepts that underlie that science and must also address the descriptive aspects of the most common minerals. In most mineralogy courses the concepts and principles tend to be covered by the instructor in the lectures, whereas the descriptive aspects of the subject, such as the study of hand specimens of minerals and rocks, are generally treated in the laboratory. Because of this duality (concepts versus descriptive materials), instructors will have a personal preference in their emphasis of one category over the other. As such, some courses may strongly emphasize the internal order of crystals, the crystal chemistry and structural aspects of minerals, and the quantitative evaluation of physical properties such as color, magnetism, hardness, specific gravity, and optical parameters. On the other hand, other courses may immerse the students, mainly through extensive laboratory work, in the more descriptive and determinative aspects of mineralogy. This latter emphasis prepares the student well for hand specimen petrology, at the expense of good grounding in the more conceptual aspects of the science. <...>