GEO 306 Lab 5
Complex Silicate Minerals and Structures
To download an electronic copy of this lab (Adobe PDF File), Click Here. Last week's lab exercise gave the students a good overview of some of the more simple silicate minerals in hand sample, as well as an introduction to the Inosilicate structures, both single and double chain. This laboratory exercise is designed to give the students an introduction to Inosilicate, Phyllosilicate, and Tectosilicate minerals in hand specimen, as well as Phyllosilicate and Tectosilicate mineral structures and chemistry. It is a highly recommended that the students to read up on these minerals in the textbook before coming to the lab so that they will have some background knowledge of these minerals before they get there. This lab, like previous ones, is designed to use and expand upon the personal background knowledge of the student while using the textbook and the TA's as valuable resources for pertinent information. The information in this lab can be difficult to grasp, but with a little extra effort, you should be able to swallow it without much difficulty.
This lab, just like the previous ones, is broken down into two main sections: Hand Sample Identification, and Mineral Chemistry and Structure. In the first section, the students are required to identify 30 hand samples based on their physical properties and what we have learned in class about mineralogy. The list of minerals given on the front page of this Lab Exercise is exhaustive, meaning that only the things on this list will be in the mineral trays.
For the section on the structure and chemistry of these minerals, the students are given several structural models to study, and are asked a series of questions geared toward making the students work together toward a fuller understanding of the structure and chemistry of these minerals. Some questions are easier than others, and some require a lot of thought and discussion. All in all, this exercise should give the students a good grasp of the more complex silicate minerals and their structures, both macroscopically and microscopically. An electronic copy of this lab is coming soon.
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