'Hugely readable and entertaining' JIM AL-KHALILI 'An accessible and crystal-clear portrait of this discipline's breadth, largely told through its history' PHIL BALL, PHYSICS WORLD Einstein's Fridge tells the story of how scientists uncovered the least known and yet most consequential of all the sciences, and learned to harness the power of heat and ice. The laws of thermodynamics govern everything from the behaviour of atoms to that of living cells, from the engines that power our world to the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Not only that, but thermodynamics explains why we must eat and breathe, how the lights come on, and ultimately how the universe will end. The people who decoded its laws came from every branch of the sciences - they were engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, cosmologists and mathematicians. Their discoveries, set over two hundred years, kick-started the industrial revolution, changed the course of world wars and informed modern understanding of black holes. This book captures the thrill of discovery and the power of revolutionary science to change the world forever.

The book presents a new and comprehensive model for the development of phosphate sediments. Starting with geochemistry and including new methods in sedimentology (sequence stratigraphy), it results in an interdisciplinary approach to a resource system covering all fields of phosphate geology. For researchers, teachers and students alike the book offers a complete overview of the whole field including case studies of major deposits.

This book takes the reader through the complete weathering cycle, from the continents to the oceans, from the perspective of modern radiogenic isotope geochemistry. Topics include surface weathering, fluvial processes, environmental pollution, oceanography and paleoceanography, sedimentary mineral diagenesis and radiometric dating, thus bridging the gap between processes acting on the Earth today and the geological record. Extensive use is made of carefully selected case studies, both pioneering and state-of-the-art. This book enables the reader to critically assess previous work from the literature as well as encouraging already established researchers to apply the most modern isotopic approaches to their particular field of study.

Held in 1993 in Niterói, Brazil, the first International Conference on Environmental Geochemistry in Tropical Countries established a starting point for this book. The book opens with a discussion of the points that arose during the closing session, summarised by Dr. E.K. Duursma: The Environment in the Tropics Remains Unknown. Most of the processes that occur in temperate environments turn out to be completely different in the tropics. This can already be seen in Chapter 3, where estimates of radionuclide transfer factors reach values considerably greater than in temperate areas. The utilisation of variables measured in temperate environments for modelling of the tropics can result in completely erroneous conclusions and, worse, inefficient remediation solutions.

This book focuses on the experimental determination of the physical properties of silicate melts and magmas close to glass transition. Abundant new data are presented. The same type of measurement is performed on a range of melts to test the effect of composition on physical properties; and a range of different techniques are used to determine the same physical properties to illustrate the relationships between the relaxation of the melt structure and the relaxation of its physical properties. This book is of interest to experimental researchers in the discussion of data obtained from both a materials science and a geoscientific point of view.

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This text covers the range of microanalytical techniques available for the analysis of geological samples, principally in research applications. Each chapter is written in a clear, informative style and has a tutorial element, designed to introduce each technique for the beginning and experienced researcher alike.

The second edition of this innovative book provides 'geo-relevant' chemistry in a highly accessible format. The environmental, geological and topical relevance has been enhanced, providing the ideal text to explain the relevance of chemical fundamentals to geological and environmental processes.

Understand the Environmental Processes That Control Groundwater Quality The integration of environmental isotopes with geochemical studies is now recognized as a routine approach to solving problems of natural and contaminated groundwater quality. Advanced sampling and analytical methods are readily accessible and affordable, providing abundant geochemical and isotope data for high spatial resolution and high frequency time series. Groundwater Geochemistry and Isotopes provides the theoretical understanding and interpretive methods and contains a useful chapter presenting the basics of sampling and analysis. This text teaches the thermodynamic basis and principal reactions involving the major ions, gases and isotopes during groundwater recharge, weathering and redox evolution. Subsequent chapters apply these principles in hands-on training for dating young groundwaters with tritium and helium and ancient systems with radiocarbon, radiohalides and noble gases, and for tracing reactions of the major contaminants of concern in groundwaters. Covers the basics of solutes, gases and isotopes in water, and concentration-activity relationships and reactions Describes tracing the water cycle, weathering, and the geochemical evolution of water quality Explores dating groundwater as young as a few years to over hundreds of millions of years Uses case studies to demonstrate the application of geochemistry and isotopes for contaminated groundwaters Accessible to consultants and practitioners as well as undergraduates, Groundwater Geochemistry and Isotopes presents the basics of environmental isotopes and geochemistry, and provides you with a full understanding of their use in natural and contaminated groundwater.

Drawn from a wide range of sources, the statistics in this handbook cover 46 minerals. This edition has been updated to include the latest available figures and prices. Statistics for capacity are given as well as conversion factors between the commonly-traded forms of each mineral.

Combining field research of outcrop geology and investigating the recent formation of carbonate rocks in coastal environments the author gives an introduction in sequence stratigraphy. Using computer simulations the book focuses on four questions, regarding the geometry of carbonate wedges, sequences comparable with geotectonic cycles, their influence by geoidal pulses and the determination of these geoidal pulse distribution in geological time. Examples from the Alps and Florida show that ramps and divergent patterns, megabreccias, drowning of carbonate platforms etc. are results of global short-term sea level falls, interpreted as geoidal eustasy. This volume will be a fruitful supplement for the interpretation and understanding of sequence stratigraphic sections not only for scientists and students but also for researchers in the oil andgas industry.

The book on deposition, diagenesis, and weathering of organic matter-rich sediments is a summary of seven years of research work of the author at the Institute of Petroleum and Organic Geochemistry in J}lich. It contains a comparision of various depositional environments (lakes, deltas, seas)with respect to organic matter characteristics, a special chapter on the deposition of the Posidonia shale, a summary of organic matter maturation and related petroleum generation, and a chapter on the use of maturationparameters as calibration tools for numerical modelling of temperature histories of sedimentary basins. Also, microscopic effects of petroleum generation and oil to gas cracking are treated. The final chapters deal withcoals as source rocks for oil and gas and with the effects of weatheringon sediments which are rich in organic matter.

This work is based on the observation that further major advances in geochemistry, particularly in understanding the rules that govern the ways in which elements come together to form minerals and rocks, will require the application of the theories of quantum mechanics. The book therefore outlines this theoretical background and discusses the models used to describe bonding in geochemical systems. It is the first book to describe and critically review the application of quantum mechanical theories to minerals and geochemical systems. The book consolidates valuable findings from chemistry and materials science as well as mineralogy and geochemistry, and the presentation has relevance to professionals in a wide range of disciplines. Experimental techniques are surveyed, but the emphasis is on applying theoretical tools to various groups of minerals: the oxides, silicates, carbonates, borates, and sulfides. Other topics dealt with in depth include structure, stereochemistry, bond strengths and stabilities of minerals, various physical properties, and the overall geochemical distribution of the elements.

The application of thermal analysis is outlined by 18 contributions, writtenby experts in the various fields of geosciences. Emphasis was laid on the determination of minerals and technical products, kinetic parameters and calorific values in glass and ceramics technology, characterization of raw materials (e.g. clays, industrial minerals), in quality control and performance assessment, but also in environment protection from soil and water pollution, using re-evaluated existing and new data and improved combined modern methods. This book is addressed to practitioners, scientistsand students in mineralogy/crystallography, applied geology, material sciences, and environmental sciences.

The statistics in this book cover 48 minerals and provide information on world reserves, world mine production, reserve/production ratios, world smelter production, world capacity, consumption by country/region, end use patterns, substitutes, technical possibilities, prices, marketing arrangements.

This text brings together a wide range of ideas and methods from geochemical literature, with the principle emphasis being on whole-rock chemistry. This text has two main goals - to put into the hands of a non-expert, who needs to make use of geochemical data, a summary of the methods and techniques currently used in geochemistry; and to collect the disparate techniques and methodologies used by geochemists into one volume.

Soil and Water Contamination, Second Edition gives a structured overview of transport and fate processes of environmental contaminants. Dealing with all topics essential for understanding and predicting contaminant patterns in soil, groundwater and surface water, it contributes to the formation of a solid basis for adequate soil and water pollution control and integrated catchment management. A unique feature of this work is that it does not treat water and soil pollution as independent processes, but as components of an integrated whole. The core of this geoscientific approach is divided into four parts: Introduction to the basics of soil and water contamination, such as the fundamentals of environmental pollution and chemistry and the basic properties of soil, groundwater and surface water. Source, role, and behaviour of substances in soil and water, treating natural and anthropogenic sources of nutrients, heavy metals, radionuclides and organic pollutants as well as emerging substances of concern, their physico-chemical characteristics, behaviour, and toxicity. Transport and fate of substances in soil and water, focusing on processes of transport, exchange and transformations like advection, dispersion, adsorption kinetics and biochemical decay. Special attention is paid to the mathematical description and modelling of these processes. Patterns of substances in soil and water, explaining spatial and temporal patterns of pollutants in soil, groundwater, and surface water, illustrated by recent case studies from fundamental and applied research. This comprehensive, successful textbook, now in its second edition, has been conscientiously updated and extended and includes many case studies, examples and exercises sections, providing undergraduate and graduate students in the Earth and Environmental Sciences with all the material necessary for the study of soil and water contamination. In addition, it can serve as a useful source of info

Metallogeny of Tin attempts to develop a general metallogenic model for tin in identifying the essential or relevant processes in tin ore formation. The methodological principle is based on an interplay between a background of basic petrogenetic concepts and a number of specific local and regional data on tin deposits and tin provinces. The author condenses the many apparently specific complexities encountered in individual ore deposits to a few major processes of general importance.

This volume is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of dynamic biological changes through the Phanerozoic which are associated with mass extinction events and similar biotic crises, and their causal mechanisms. In particular, it documents in detail the complex nature of terrestrial and extraterrestrial feedback loops that are associated with many mass extinction intervals. Authors have been asked to represent most of the known mass extinction events through time, and to comment on the complex earthbound or extraterrestrial causes (or both) for global biotic crises. The reader is offered new perspectives of extinction boundaries, a more innovative and diverse approach to causal mechanisms and mass extinction theory, blended views of paleobiologists, oceanographers, geochemists, volcanologists, and sedimentologists by an international cast of authors. No other book on extinction presents such a broad spectrum of data and theories on the subject of mass extinction.

It is widely accepted that there is a relationship between ice volume and the solar insolation in summer in the northern hemisphere. The Earth's glacial cycles are driven by cyclic changes in the Earth's orbital elements. This conclusion is based on the strong coherence between the approx. 20000 and 40000 year spectral components of ice volume and insolation (Milankovitch-curve) records. These frequencies are determined by the variation of the obliquity of the Earth's axis and by its position relative to the Earth's orbit around the sun. The degree of sum mer insolation on the Earth's northern Hemisphere is believed to be relevant to climate because the North Atlantic is where cold saline water is being formed. Present day deep water circulation is driven by salt build-up in due to net evapora tion. In contrast, in the North Pacific precipitation exceeds evaporation. Thus, deep water transfers a surplus of salt from the N. Atlantic to the North Pacific. This surface water delivers also oxygen to the deep ocean. In contrast, upwelling deep water transfers nutrients from the deep ocean to the surface water. Today the time of renewal of deep water is in the order of 1000 years."

Thermodynamic treatment of mineral equilibria, a topic central to mineralogical thermodynamics, can be traced back to the tum of the century, when J. H. Van't Hoff and his associates pioneered in applying thermodynamics to the mineral assemblages observed in the Stassfurt salt deposit. Although other renowned researchers joined forces to develop the subject - H. E. Boeke even tried to popularize it by giving an overview of the early developments in his "Grundlagen der physikalisch-chemischen Petrographie," Berlin, 1915 - it remained, on the whole, an esoteric subject for the majority of the contemporary geological community. Seen that way, mineralogical thermodynamics came of age during the last four decades, and evolved very rapidly into a mainstream discipline of geochemistry. It has contributed enormously to our understanding of the phase equilibria of mineral systems, and has helped put mineralogy and petrology on a firm quantitative basis. In the wake of these developments, academic curricula now require the students of geology to take a course in basic thermodynamics, traditionally offered by the departments of chemistry. Building on that foundation, a supplementary course is generally offered to familiarize the students with diverse mineralogical applications of thermo dynamics. This book draws from the author's experience in giving such a course, and has been tailored to cater to those who have had a previous exposure to the basic concepts of chemical thermodynamics."

Practical statistics is a powerful tool used frequently by agricultural researchers and graduate students involved in investigating experimental design and analysis. One of the most widely used statistical analysis software packages for this purpose is Stata. The Stata software program has matured into a user-friendly environment with a wide variety of statistical functions. Agricultural Statistical Data Analysis Using Stata introduces readers to the use of Stata to solve agricultural statistical problems. The book begins with an overview of statistical software and the Stata program. It explains the various windows and menus and describes how they are integrated. The next chapters explore data entry and importing as well as basic output formats and descriptive statistics. The author describes the ever-increasing design complexity and how this is implemented in the software. He reviews one of Stata's strongest features, which is its programming ability. He also examines post hoc tests as well as Stata's graphing capabilities. The final chapters provide information on regression analysis, data transformations, and the analyses of non-parametric data. Many agricultural researchers are unprepared for the statistics they will need to use in their profession. Written in an easy-to-read format with screen shots and illustrations, the book is suitable for a wide audience, including beginners in statistics who are new to Stata, as well as more advanced Stata users and those interested in more complex designs.

This is a book about the why and how of doing experiments on rocks, minerals, magmas, and fluids. It could have as logically been subtitled "Experimental petrology" as "Experimental geochemistry," but we chose geochemistry to emphasize the broad and overlapping nature of current experimental work. We have tried to aim the book at a general readership which we hope will include advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and anyone else interested in learning something about experimental petrology. Although we hope there will be something of interest for the practicing experimentalist, our aim is at the non-experimentalist interested in learning why experiments are useful, what kind of experiments can be done, and what some of the major problems and limitations are and how they can best be avoided. The result of a journey through this book should be an ability to evaluate published experimental work critically and a knowledge of the kinds of problems an experimentalist might be able to help solve. Some details of experimental technique are included in the Appendix for those readers who want to "get their hands dirty. " Indeed, one of our main incentives for writing this book was to try to encourage more petrologists and geochemists to become experimentalists. In our pedagogical approach we have chosen to discuss a small number of case histories as illustrations of principles and techniques. We have tried to select studies we regard as well executed.

When Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, one of his main concerns was with the perceived shortness of the fossil record of life. Until the work of J. William Schopf and his colleagues, much of this history was thought to be unknowable. This book, through a memoire of Schopf's personal recollections, documents astonishing discoveries revealing the first 85% of the history of life. These earliest periods of life on Earth emerge as a tale of individual and internationally collaborative exploration told by a scholar whose 60 years of research contributed to the recognition of the richness and diversity which forms the foundation of today's biodiversity. Key Features Documents, through personal narrative, a paradigm shift is the study of the earliest life Summarizes a fossil record largely unknown until relatively recently Addresses one of Darwin's most troubling concerns about his theory of natural selection Predicts future developments in the study of first life

The term "carbon cycle" is normally thought to mean those processes that govern the present-day transfer of carbon between life, the atmosphere, and the oceans. This book describes another carbon cycle, one which operates over millions of years and involves the transfer of carbon between rocks and the combination of life, the atmosphere, and the oceans. The weathering of silicate and carbonate rocks and ancient sedimentary organic matter (including recent, large-scale human-induced burning of fossil fuels), the burial of organic matter and carbonate minerals in sediments, and volcanic degassing of carbon dioxide contribute to this cycle. In The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle, Robert Berner shows how carbon cycle models can be used to calculate levels of atmospheric CO 2 and O 2 over Phanerozoic time, the past 550 million years, and how results compare with independent methods. His analysis has implications for such disparate subjects as the evolution of land plants, the presence of giant ancient insects, the role of tectonics in paleoclimate, and the current debate over global warming and greenhouse gases

Technological advance affects almost all areas of human life. Rapid digitization, increased mobility, new biotechnologies, and nanotechnology deeply influence, amongst others, industrial production, entertainment, work, military affairs, and individual life. Besides overwhelmingly positive effects on wealth, comfort, innovation, and development, this also raises questions of unintended effects, of tensions with democracy, of the role of citizens, and of its sustainability facing environmental issues. Tools and procedures are needed to cope with this challenging situation. Technology assessment (TA) has been developed more than fifty years ago to enable science, the economy, and society to harvest the potential of new technology to the maximum extent possible and to deal responsibly with possible adverse effects. It was developed more than 50 years ago in the U.S. Congress and has diversified considerably in the meantime. Parliamentary TA in many European states and at the international level, participatory TA at the local and regional levels worldwide, and TA as part of engineering processes are the most relevant fields today. Technology assessment is a growing field of interdisciplinary research and scientific policy advice. This volume (a) gives an overview of motivations of TA, its history and its current practices, (b) develops a fresh theoretical perspective on TA rooted in social theory and philosophy, and (c) draws conclusions from the theoretical perspective for the further development of TA's practices. It provides the first comprehensive view on the growing field of TA at the international level.