Name: Class day and time
Web Extras for Chapter 2: Mineral Identification
3. Want to know more about your birthstone? Visit the Amethyst Galleries website (http://mineral.galleries.com) and click on Groupings and then Birthstones. (This website may look a bit old-fashioned, but it is full of excellent information for the non-specialist.)
a. What is your birthstone?
b. Your birthstone stone is either a particular mineral or a distinct variety of a particular mineral. How is your birthstone classified?
c. What is its chemical formula?
d. What is its color? Luster? Hardness? Cleavage? Streak?
e. What properties make this stone unusually interesting or desirable?
f. With what other minerals does your birthstone mineral commonly occur? You’ll need to click through to the main mineral variety to find this information. (If your birthstone is a cryptocrystalline variety of quartz, list instead the other semi-precious varieties of chalcedony.)
Other websites of interest include www.theimage.com, which contains pictures of, and information on, many minerals; and www.gemstone.org, a site that has pictures and lots of information about gems.
Web Extras for Chapter 2: Mineral Identification
In Greater Depth
4. Acid Mine Drainage. Acid mine drainage is a problem that affects many rivers and streams in the coal mining regions of the Appalachians (especially Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky) and in watersheds surrounding coal and metal mines across the United States, Canada, and the rest of the world. Do an internet search using the phrase “acid mine drainage” to answer the following questions. (www.google.com is a good search engine, but any will do the job.) If you are interested in acid mine drainage in a particular state or country (and you are pretty sure that it has coal or metal ore mines in it), add its name to your search. If you are interested in any biological impacts, add ‘biological effects’ to your list of search terms.
Because you will get a lot of hits from an open search, read the questions below before picking a site or two that seems informative and authoritative.
a. What is the name and web address of the site or sites you selected?
b. Was it set up by a government body, an independent environmental group, an environmental company, a university research team, or another type of individual or organization?
c. Which mineral or minerals are causing the acid mine drainage? What is one visually obvious symptom of
acid mine drainage?
d. How does acid mine drainage affect the chemistry and/or biology of the streams it flows into?
e. Briefly explain how passive treatment systems work to clean up AMD waters.
f. Visit http://www.alleghenylandtrust.org/properties/wingfield/overview to see an example of how a wetland ecosystem was constructed in a part of the country where wetlands are rare. Watch the video, then click on Nature to see the many species attracted to this AMD passive treatment system. Do you see any downside to having a passive treatment system built near where people live? (Remember: AMD was already present!)
Web Extras for the Laboratory Manual for Physical Geology by Jones and Jones (McGraw-Hill).