Mineral Classification—What's in a Name?
Summary
Students derive their own scheme for identifying and naming minerals. Examples include different minerals that have the same crystal forms, and mineral species that occur with numerous forms and varieties to demonstrate the diversity of the mineral world. This exercise introduces the ambiguities encountered in classifying minerals that lead ultimately to the development of Dana's system of mineralogy.
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Context
Audience
Skills and concepts that students must have mastered
Students should have knowledge of basic chemistry and of minerals equivalent to what they would learn in an introductory geology class.
How the activity is situated in the course
This activity is a stand-alone exercise, but is part of a larger volume of classroom and laboratory activities from "Teaching Mineralogy," a workbook published by the Mineralogical Society of America, Brady, J., Mogk, D. W., and Perkins, D., (editors), 1997,406 pp. This activity is the 4th of 36 mineralogy exercises and is used at the beginning of the course after reviewing mineral identification based on physical properties and before systematically looking at groups of minerals.
Goals
Content/concepts goals for this activity
- Become familiar with the most important mineral properties used for mineral identification.
- Become familiar with some historical aspects of mineral science.
Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity
- Practice analyzing a complex problem, synthesizing information of different sorts, and deriving a logical and practical mineral classification scheme.
- Evaluate ways early mineralogists approached mineral classification.
- Develop observational, descriptive, analytical, and interpretive skills.
- Exercise hypothesis testing and critical thinking skills.
Other skills goals for this activity
- Exercise collaborative/cooperative learning and get comfortable working in small groups.
- Practice peer critiquing and evaluation.
Description of the activity/assignment
Students think about the nature of classification systems and about properties that are most useful for classifying minerals as they derive their own hierarchical scheme, or key, for identifying and naming mineral species. When finished, they read Mineralogy: A Historical Review by Robert M. Hazen and revise their classification scheme. Finally, groups trade their systematic plans and identify unknown mineral samples with them, comenting on the usefullness of the various methods.
Determining whether students have met the goals
There is no right answer, but students must be able to justify their reasons for selecting the order of criteria in their classification systems.
Students prepare critiques of their own and of other group's classification systems and the depth and insight displayed in their critiques reveals whether the activity was a success.
Teaching materials and tips
This assignment can be downloaded in Word (RTF) (Rich Text File 7kB Jul13 05) or pdf (Acrobat (PDF) 13kB Jul13 05) format.
- A more complete description of learning objectives, suggested materials, the original assignment, reflection questions, assessment, and notes for instructors on pedagogy and teaching strategies can be found in the original exercise (Mogk, 1997) (Acrobat (PDF) 2.9MB Jul13 05)
Other Materials
- This activity has supplemental information submitted as part of the InTeGrate Teaching the Methods of Geoscience workshop in June 2012.
Supporting references/URLs
- Dave Mogk's Mineralogy Course Goals and Summary
- Course Syllabus (Microsoft Word 33kB Feb21 06) and Course Learning Goals (Excel 26kB Feb21 06)
- Dex Perkins' Mineralogy Course Summary and Goals
- Mineralogy Course Syllabus
- Hazen, R.M., 1984, Mineralogy: A Historical Review, Journal of Geological Education v 32, p288-298.
- Brady, J., Mogk, D. W., and Perkins, D., (editors), 1997, Teaching Mineralogy, a workbook published by the Mineralogical Society of America, 406 pp.
- Mineralogical Society of America - Join today!