A comprehensive handbook of analytical techniques in geochemistry which provides the student and the professional with an understanding of the wide spectrum of different analytical methods that can be applied to Earth and environmental materials, together with a critical appreciation of their relative merits and limitations.

The founders of geology at the beginning of the last century were suspicious oflaboratories. Hutton's well-known dictum illustrates the point: "There are also superficial reasoning men . . . they judge of the great oper ations of the mineral kingdom from having kindled a fire, and looked into the bottom of a little crucible. " The idea was not unreasonable; the earth is so large and its changes are so slow and so complicated that labo ratory tests and experiments were of little help. The earth had to be studied in its own terms and geology grew up as a separate science and not as a branch of physics or chemistry. Its practitioners were, for the most part, experts in structure, stratigraphy, or paleontology, not in silicate chemistry or mechanics. The chemists broke into this closed circle before the physicists did. The problems of the classification of rocks, particularly igneous rocks, and of the nature and genesis of ores are obviously chemical and, by the mid- 19th century, chemistry was in a state where rocks could be effectively analyzed, and a classification built up depending partly on chemistry and partly on the optical study of thin specimens. Gradually the chemical study of rocks became one of the central themes of earth science.

Analytical Geochemistry is the fifth book in the Methods in Geochemistry and Geophysics series. This book serves as an introductory manual, presenting techniques that are frequently required in the analysis of rocks and minerals. After a broad introduction to geochemistry, the book explores qualitative and quantitative chemical analysis. It then focuses on the chemical analysis of the minor elements, such as antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, bismuth, boron, bromine, cadmium, carbon, cerium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, columbium and tantalum, copper, fluorine, gallium, germanium, gold, hydrogen, indium, iodine, iridium, lead, lithium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, nitrogen, osmium, oxygen, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, rubidium and cesium, ruthenium, scandium, selenium and tellurium, silver, strontium, sulfur, thallium, thorium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, zinc, and zirconium and hafnium. The remaining chapters of the book illustrate different laboratory instruments, including emission spectrography, flame photometry, X-ray diffraction, fluorimetry, and chromatography. This book serves as a guide for geologists especially those who did not study chemistry as undergraduates.

Updated throughout with the latest data and findings, the Second Edition of Essentials of Geochemistry provides students with a solid understanding of the fundamentals of and approaches to modern geochemical analysis. The text uses a concepts of chemical equilibrium approach, which considers the reactions that occur as a result of changes in heat production and pressure within the Earth to introduce students to the basic geochemical principles. This text is for those who want a quantitative treatment that integrates the principles of thermodynamics, solution chemistry, and kinetics into the study of earth processes. This timely text contains numerous examples and problems sets which use SUPCRT92 to allow students to test their understanding of thermodynamic theory and maximize their comprehension of this prominent field. New sections introduce current “hot” topics such as global geochemical change with the short and long term carbon cycle, carbon isotopes and the Permo-Triassic extinction event, kinetics and the origin of life and the use of boron and nitrogen isotopes.

Chemical principles are fundamental to the Earth sciences, and geoscience students increasingly require a firm grasp of basic chemistry to succeed in their studies. The enlarged third edition of this highly regarded textbook introduces the student to such ‘geo-relevant’ chemistry, presented in the same lucid and accessible style as earlier editions, but the new edition has been strengthened in its coverage of environmental geoscience and incorporates a new chapter introducing isotope geochemistry. The book comprises three broad sections. The first (Chapters 1–4) deals with the basic physical chemistry of geological processes. The second (Chapters 5–8) introduces the wave-mechanical view of the atom and explains the various types of chemical bonding that give Earth materials their diverse and distinctive properties. The final chapters (9–11) survey the geologically relevant elements and isotopes, and explain their formation and their abundances in the cosmos and the Earth. The book concludes with an extensive glossary of terms; appendices cover basic maths, explain basic solution chemistry, and list the chemical elements and the symbols, units and constants used in the book.

"This book presents quantitative treatments of a wide range of fundamental problems related to geochemistry and geology. It shows that trace elements, isotopes, and equations are integrative tools in modern geochemistry for studying various Earth processes." -- Back cover.

Using Geochemical Data brings together in one volume a wide range of ideas and methods currently used in geochemistry, providing a foundation of knowledge from which the reader can interpret, evaluate and present geochemical data.