In this very first chapter, I would like to give you an idea of the term “crystal structure.” First of all, we want to get an impression of how large or small crystalline objects can be. For this purpose, take a look at . Fig. 1.1, which is based on the popular short film “Powers of Ten” from 1977 [1]. This short film illustrates in a beautiful way, of which sizes objects are that are subject of scientific investigations. They span an impressive range of orders of magnitude. We do not want to explain all objects in detail, but instead will focus on just a few. <...>

Mineralogy deals with the predominantly crystalline building blocks of the geologi-cal matter surrounding us, the minerals. Since this geological matter served as a natural environment for humans from the beginning of their existence as a habitat and source of raw materials, the study of minerals as raw materials, building materials, materials and jewelry has always been a vital necessity. Mineralogy from this point of view is one of the oldest sciences. The increasing production and use of technical materials led to the fact that the concept of minerals today has also been extended to synthetic products <...>

THE proliferation and the importance of the results of crystal structure analysis confront the chemist with the need to learn the language of crystallography. This book is an outgrowth of the opinion that the training of the undergraduate chemistry major can include more of this language than the memorization of a list of lattice types. At the same time, it would be unreasonable and impractical to expect all chemists to become experts in this specialized field. The purpose, therefore, is to treat the subject in a manner that will quickly and painlessly enable the nonspecialist to read and comprehend the crystallographic literature. It is hoped that this introduction may serve as a useful starting point for those students who wish to pursue the subject further.

The principal message is contained in the first four chapters. That is, these chapters supply the vocabulary of crystallography, and descriptions of crystal structures should be rendered intelligible by acquaintance with this language. In order not to discourage the general reader, the use of mathematics has been kept to a minimum. The decision to omit vector and matrix methods was made reluctantly, in order to reduce the prerequisites, but the elegance thus sacrificed is a luxury that some exceptionally competent crystallographers get along without

The discipline which is now known as geostatistics began to develope over thirty years ago for mining evaluation and since has extended to other fields of activity. Around 1960 in particular, G. Matheron built linear geostatistics. Some of its tools (variogram, kriging) are widely used nowadays. Linear geostatistics makes it possible for instance to evaluate the metal content of a mining block or panel by estimating the mean of the grades of the points in it from samples. The reader of this book is supposed to be familiar with linear geostatistics. <...>