Earth's Materials and their Environments

In this course you will learn about the structure, material properties, and formation of the materials that comprise the solid Earth and other planetary bodies. For the most part, these solid materials are composed of crystalline minerals. This course covers the physical properties and chemistry of minerals, the fields of optical mineralogy and crystallography, and the identification of minerals as individual crystals and components of rocks. You will also learn about how minerals play a critical role in large-scale systems in the Earth. For example, minerals play a key role in regulating Earth's climate. Complex Earth systems are also responsible for the creation of the ore bodies that provide humanity with an increasingly important variety of materials that are critical to the advancement of technology and sustainable development.