GEOS 202
Mineralogy
Last Offered Fall 2020
Division III
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

This course could be subtitled “An Introduction to Earth Materials and Analytical Techniques.” As the basis for all subsequent solid-earth courses in the major, it provides a systematic framework for the study of minerals–Earth’s building blocks: their physical and chemical properties at all scales and the common analytical methods used to identify and interpret them. The course progresses from hand-specimen morphology and crystallography through element distribution and crystal chemistry to the phase relations, compositional variation, and mineral associations within major rock-forming mineral systems. Laboratory work includes the determination of crystal symmetry; mineral separation; the principles and applications of optical emission spectroscopy; wavelength- and energy-dispersive x-ray spectrochemical analysis; x-ray diffraction; the use of the petrographic microscope; and the identification of important minerals in hand specimen and thin section. This course is in the Solid Earth group for the Geosciences major.