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Each chapter has new introductory statements that explain what follows. New figures have been added in many places and thirteen new "interest boxes" Relate the subject of mineralogy to matters that are of more general and/or geologic interest. Eight new color plates with photographs of 72 of the most common minerals are new as well.
An expanded and More Usable CD. A revised version (2.1) of the CD–ROM Mineralogy Tutorials is enclosed with this text, designed for both student and instructor use. It Includes many animations that deal with three–dimensional concepts (in crystal chemistry and crystallography) and which are difficult to visualize from a book illustration, as well as brief text pages for 104 of the most common minerals, with links to crystal structure illustrations, compositional and assemblage diagrams, stability and phase diagrams, solid solution mechanism, and so on. It has an "Autorun" feature for the PC platform; an efficient print function was added, and all animations were made compatible with Quick Time version 4.0. Furthermore, audio explanations by the author were added to about 50 screens to aid the user′s understanding of the presentations and/or animations. The illustrations and animations are consistently large so that the images are extremely useful as an accompaniment to lectures, through a computer overhead projection system.
Laboratory Manual. Also available from John Wiley & Sons, Inc. for use in the mineralogy laboratory is: Klein, C., 1994 Minerals and Rocks: Exercises in Crystallography, Mineralogy, and Hand Specimen Petrology, revised edition, 405 PP. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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The strengths of this edition are in its treatment of crystallography and of crystal chemistry (however, Bloss' Crystallography and Crystal Chemistry covers this well), mineral chemistry (compositional variation in minerals, calculation of analyses, etc.), x-ray crystallography, mineral stability diagrams, good line crystal diagrams in its systematic section, and a usefully organized index. Although this reviewer has often disliked determinative tables as a waste of space (checking entries takes time but is educational), those in this edition have been found useful to students.
A few weaknesses are the removal of interfacial angles from this edition (even cleavage angles may aid in identification), the absence (except for hydrochloric acid upon a few carbonates) of most simple chemical tests upon samples, using cheap hardware store acids and reagents, and the absence of any passing reference to the subject of blowpipe analysis, a historical adjunct that served mineralogy as much as the Bunsen burner served chemistry. Although that is a separate subject not possibly treated adequately within a one-semester course, and not generally treated in college courses today, it is a historic part of our mineralogical heritage, and often can serve a useful purpose in the aid of identification of commoner species. A few notes as to its place in history, and a few text references for further study, would have been appreciated. However, the Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals, by Frederick H. Pough (Peterson field guide series) may serve as a useful complement to this text.
This could use rewording in a few places, as some sentence structure (indeed some formula structure) may be found ambiguous, an example being formulas on page 75 to find a and c, which are not clear as to whether parts of these, as in the last paragraph on said page, are in the numerator or in the denominator... Another example is the use of the stereographic net, which I had quite a time figuring out from the text, and when I did I rewrote directions and pinned them up on the bulletin board of the geology dept. Kudos, however, to whomever put the stereonet inside the back cover of the text with the suggestion to photocopy it for use. Also the list, two pages past the last numbered page, of locations of some key tables and illustrations. Clarity of language is important to a student desiring to learn more about some aspect of the subject.
It is difficult to rate books upon a number system, as objective reasons and examples are more informative. The rating, which seems to be required, is an average based upon my own personal opinion: 6.7. [DMM]
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