B121
EARTH MATERIALS
Lecturer: Dr IG Wood (website material prepared by
Prof. G D Price)
˝ Course Unit
Main Objectives
The
course will introduce the major rock forming minerals, attempting to provide a
basic understanding of their phase stability, structural and chemical
characteristics, and general indication of their origins. The optical
properties of the minerals will be discussed, and practical classes will be run
to illustrate the minerals in thin section.
Content and Organisation
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Every week you will have a practical to do.
These are essential to the course, and will contribute towards the “course
work” used in the assessment. The practicals will be collected in one week
after they are set.
In addition, you will be given a weekly question
sheet to test your understanding and to guide you through self-study topics
that cannot be covered directly in the lectures. These question sheets are
marked and they form another component of your course work.
Towards the end of the module, there will be a
hand specimen test. You are not allowed to bring textbooks into the test, but
you are allowed to refer to your file of hand-specimen descriptions.
Recommended reading and WWW links
Introduction
to Mineral Sciences by Putnis (CUP)
Mineralogy
for students by A Pring & M Battey (Longman)
An
Introduction to Rock Forming Minerals by Deer, Howie and Zussman (Longman)
Optical
Mineralogy by Gribble and Hall (UCL Press)
Assessment
Coursework
100%