Links

This is a repository of links that may be useful during your sojourn through this course. There are only a couple of them for starters, but I am sure the list will grow as the semester wears on!

Mineralogical Society of America - The MSA has a lot of useful information and materials for members as well as students and teachers of mineralogy and its related subjects.
USGS - The Official Website of the United States Geologic Survey.
Geokem - This has an extremely extensive collection of information on volcanism, petrology, mineralogy, and other major disciplines within the Earth Sciences. Definitely worth a look!
Petrology Net - A collection of various links and useful information in the field of Petrology.
What is a Crystal? - This site gives a good overview of many of the topics covered in the first lecture, and then some. Worth a look if you have some spare time.
Pauling's Rules - This website gives a comprehensive explanation of Pauling's Rules, how they work, what they mean, and how to apply them.
Pauling's Rules: Again - This website give a slightly different perspective on Pauling's Rules, definitely worth a look.
Coordination Polyhedra - This site gives a good brief introduction and description of coordination polyhedra and how they work.
Crystal Structures - This website shows several different crystal structures and packing arrays. Good visuals, definitely worth a look.
Unit Cells - This site gives a good overview of the concept of unit cells, as well as some info on Bravais Lattices, which we will get to later in the course.
Ionic Substitution - This site starts off with yet another discussion of Pauling's Rules, and then moves on to talk about ionic substitution. This is an important concept to understand, so it may be helpful to give this site a once-over!
Solid Solutions - This site gives a brief overview of solid solutions and how and why they work.
Simple Ionic Structures - This site gives a good in-depth introduction to simple ionic structures. It goes into quite a bit of detail, perhaps more than you need, but it does give some good diagrams and background information on the topic.
Oxide Structures - This site discussed some of the more common oxide structures.
Native Elements - This site gives a comprehensive overview of the systematic mineralogy of Native Element mineralogy.
Sulfides - This site give a good introduction and overview of the mineralogy of Sulfide minerals.
Carbonates - This site gives an excellent overview of Carbonate mineralogy.
Sulfates and Phosphates - This site gives a comprehensive overview of Sulfate and Phosphate mineralogy.
Silicate Classification - This site gives a very quick and simple overview of the way in which silicate minerals and structures are classified.
Orthosilicates - This site gives some good insight into the structure and mineralogy of Orthosilicates.
Chain Silicates - This website gives a good deal of information, probably more than you'll need, about chain silicate mineralogy.
Layer Silicates - This guy has great info, so I keep putting his site up here! Lots of info on Phyllosilicates here. Worth a look!
Framework Silicates - Here he is again! This site gives an excellent overview of Tectosilicates, as well as Oxide minerals. Take your time on this one, lots of info here!
Physical Properties of Minerals - A good introduction to several of the common diagnostic physical properties used to identify minerals.
Point Symmetry - Intro to point symmetry and how it works.
Crystal Classes - This site gives a good introduction to the different crystal classes used in Mineralogy.
Miller Indices - Ah, the heart of introductory crystallography.
Translations, Plane Groups - Delving a little deeper into the heart of some major symmetry and crystallography concepts.
Stereographic Projection - This is a great Power Point presentation that discusses the major concepts behind stereographic projections and their use.
Xtal Draw - This is the website for the Xtal Draw program designed by Bob Downs' research group at the University of Arizona. This program is extremely powerful and very helpful in visualizing the 3-D structure of many different mineral groups.