Clay Minerals and the Environement

Goals are:

• Understanding the basic principles of clay mineralogy, crystallography and clay chemistry.

• Ability to critically evaluate and synthesize scientific literature in clay science

• Ability to prepare and analyse clays and to interpret the results

• Acquire the basic principles of SEM operation and the advanced XRD methods to study clay minerals, including analyses software


Content:

1)  We will read scientific article on clay minerals and learn how to discuss scientific articles

2)  Lectures on basic clay mineralogy including:

    • Principles of how clay minerals form

    • Structure and chemistry of clay minerals

    • Understand the environmental conditions needed to form clay minerals

    • Physical and chemical properties of clay minerals that are used in the mineral industry

3)   Lab on clay mineralogy including:

      •  Understand the fundamentals of at least one analytical technique (i.e. XRD, XRF, SEM).  Every student will get 2-3 standard clay samples and use this analytical technique to help characterize and identify the clay mineral(s)