Exercises With Mineral Names, Literature and History part of Cutting Edge:Mineralogy:Activities
This activity is a series of exercises I assign outside of class time, with the purpose of getting students to explore the literature resources that are available for mineralogy. The inspiration for the exercises comes from my exasperation with the repeated questions: "Why do we have to know so many minerals?" and "What about these minerals do we have to know?" Rather than saying "Everything that is important," I hope to show students that what they need to know depends on what questions they hope to answer, and that mineralogy developed in historical context, parallel with other sciences.
