earth science

The Mineralogical Record

The Mineralogical Record is a earth science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Mineralogical Record rather than just read about it. In short: The Mineralogical Record is a mineralogy magazine, published in the United States by The Mineralogical Record Inc., a non-profit organization, with a periodicity of six issues a year, totaling approximately 700 pages. Published in English, it carries articles on topographic mineralogy, including locations around the world, and articles on specimen-oriented mineralogy.

Key takeaways

The Mineralogical Record belongs to earth science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Mineralogical Record to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Mineralogical Record from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Mineralogical Record is a mineralogy magazine, published in the United States by The Mineralogical Record Inc., a non-profit organization, with a periodicity of six issues a year, totaling approximately 700 pages. Published in English, it carries articles on topographic mineralogy, including locations around the world, and articles on specimen-oriented mineralogy. It also publishes details of the main mineral fairs and, occasionally, articles on the history of mineralogy and on museums and mineral collections. In addition to the regular editions, it occasionally includes supplementary numbers, distributed at no additional cost to subscribers, on mineral collections from specific geographical areas. The publication of the magazine is maintained by the payment of subscriptions, advertising, publication and sale of books, and through donations.

History The Mineralogical Record was first published in 1970, on the initiative of John S. White, a curator in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Mineralogy, with the aim of filling the gap between scientific mineralogy journals (which began at that time to look more like solid state physics and chemistry than conventional descriptive mineralogy) and purely amateur magazines. In the first year, only four numbers were published, without color photographs, with the financial support of Arthur Montgomery. In issue 2 of 1976, Wendell E. Wilson joined as and remains as such today. The magazine is considered among the best in the world, both for the scientific quality of its contents and for the formal aspect, which includes the quality of the photographs and their reproduction. The work of The Mineralogical Record magazine in the promotion and dissemination of mineralogy has been recognized by giving a mineral the name of minrecordite. The role of its editor, Wendel E. Wilson, has been recognized by giving another mineral the name of wendwilsonite. In 1994, he won the Carnegie Prize for Mineralogy, the only time it has been awarded to a magazine.

Axis Axis: An Eclectic Journal of Mineralogy is a peer-reviewed online-only journal published by The Mineralogical Record since 2005. It covers a wide range of mineralogy-related topics such as the history of mineral collecting, social and cultural aspect of mineralogy and mineral-related travelogs.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Mineralogical Record

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Mineralogical Record claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In earth science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Mineralogical Record before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Mineralogical Record ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Mineralogical Record

In research: The Mineralogical Record appears in earth science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Mineralogical Record in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Mineralogical Record is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Bimonthly journals, English-language journals, Mineralogy journals, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Mineralogical Record outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Mineralogical Record in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Mineralogical Record means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Mineralogical Record out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Mineralogical Record in simple terms?

Why does The Mineralogical Record matter?

Because it connects several earth science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Mineralogical Record?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Mineralogical Record.