The Complete Encyclopedia of Minerals ebook is available to be downloaded here now.
- Title: The Complete Encyclopedia of Minerals – Description of over 600 minerals from around the world.
- Author: Petr Korbel and Milan Kovak
- Publisher: Cardwell Books
- Pages: 299
The perfect book for anyone interested in the wonderful world of minerals. 500 photographs of crystals and crystal aggregates, along with a list of classic and new occurrences for each mineral species. Minerals are arranged by chapter according to the mineral system.
The ever-increasing number of publications about minerals reflects a growing interest in nature. Most of those publications only deal with a few dozen common minerals or gemstones. This book fills the gap by also featuring less common and rare minerals. The authors describe over 600 mineral species and varieties, illustrated with about 750 color photographs.
In choosing illustrations of particular minerals, aesthetic criteria such as crystal size and color played a role in addition 10 their importance and distribution in nature. This book includes some rare minerals known only from one locality, because they from attractive crystals or aggregates.
There are minerals known to humankind since prehistoric times such as quartz and gold but also minerals first described quite recently like rossmanitc. The photographs show well-formed and colorful crystals but many aggregates, which are more common in nature are also included.
The minerals in the book are listed according to the logical system of Hugo Strunz, in his book Mineralogical Table in 1978. The chemical formulae of individual minerals follow the Mineralogical Table Species 1995 by M. Fleischer and J.A. Mandarino. The information is complemented in both cases with the latest knowledge from scientific literature, such as new nomenclature of amphiboles and micasandzeolites.
The mineral descriptions cover the basic physical and chemical data, including chemical formula and crystal system. The data provided correspond mainly to the end members. The less common valences of chemical elements im marked chemical formula (FeY, Mo, As, Mn, Pb). Where element features in both valences’ mineral, they are both marked (e.g. ilvaile, braunite).