Traditional mineralogy (learning to identify dozens of minerals) is declining in all Geology courses Students are increasingly expected to learn about what minerals tell us about the processes that led to their formation, as well as applied aspects of the subject (such as environmental or applied mineralogy).This text combines the essential elements of traditional mineralogy (determinative methods, and the properties and identification of key minerals, including a color plate section of mineral images) with more modern issues such as mineral geochemistry, applied mineralogy, and quantitative methods.