Mineralogy Research in George Rossman's Group

2008  - 2009 acdemic year

Caltech Students, Staff and Collaborators

George Rossman mineralogy	Elizabeth Miura Boyd analytical mineralogy	Steve Chemtob Planetary Minerals
Jed Mosenfelder OH studies	Ma Chi nanomineralogy	Sarvesh Garimella Clay Minerals

Current Projects in Mineralogy

1. Hydrous Components in Nominally Anhydrous Minerals
2. Analytical Calibration of the Spectrum of OH in Minerals
3. Spectroscopy of Minerals
        The RRUFF project
4. Nano-mineralogy
1. Nano-phases in Rose Quartz
2. New mineral characterization
5. The OH content of synthetic olivine

Recent Projects in Mineralogy

1. The origin of green color in quartz from amethyst deposits
2. OH in crustal minerals - feldspars and pyroxenes
3. Martian Surface Mineralogy
4. Instrumentation development - tunable laser spectrometer

1. Undergraduate Research: nano-inclusions in minerals
2. Undergraduate Research: OH in tourmaline
3. Undergraduate Research: Temperature dependence of OH in minerals
4. Undergraduate Research: thermochromic garnets
5. Undergraduate Research: Studies of the rare mineral painite

Most-recent postdocs

Former graduate students

Visitors

Our laboratory facilities

List of selected publications from the group

Publication list including data files and figures from recent publications

The Mineral Spectroscopy Server

On-line information on the absorption spectra and color of minerals.

• Information on the origin of color in minerals and gems
• Data files available as ASCII (wavelength, absorbance) pairs [more than a thousand files]
• Images of selected mineral spectra
• Extensive references to mineral optical spectroscopy  [more than 600 references] 

  PLUS

• information on manganese dendrites [They are not pyrolusite!]
• information of desert varnish
• information on ametrine [amethyst - citrine bicolored quartz]
• information on painite [ formerly one of the rarest minerals]

Go to the Mineral Spectroscopy Server 

Other Mineral-related science at Caltech:

See a journey down a tourmaline crystal:  animation through slices of Madagascar liddicoatite