Mixtures and Mineral Reactions

Abstract

The monograph Mixtures and Mineral Reactions contains a large amount of information of value to mineralogists, petrologists, and geochemists. The first four chapters are a succinct account of the thermodynamic description of crystalline solutions. In these early chapters a comparison is made between different mathematical treatments of activitycomposition models, there is a discussion of the unmixing by exsolution of a single solution into two phases, and methods of computing phase equilibria in assemblages of different minerals are given. If the reader is perplexed by the discussion of standard states (cf. Figure 1.3), not to worry. That is a normal condition for anyone forced to choose between equivalent reference frames yet knowing, somewhere down the line, that the choice will ultimately make one's computational life more or less difficult.