In the first year, students with 'Biochemistry' specialization should choose four courses out of these five specialization courses offered.
The course has the following four aims:
- Gain knowledge about current research themes and methods in mineralogy, mineral physics and material science.
- Learn how to apply quantitative models to answer mineralogical and material science questions.
- Gain awareness of analytical techniques available to study mineralogical research questions.
- Acquire the ability to understand and critically examine scientific literature in this field.
This course will cover the following topics:
- Crystallography, including point and space groups for crystal symmetry, reciprocal lattice.
- Solid-state physics, including bonding and electronic structure of solids, surface to bulk properties of materials.
- Advanced analytical tools, including spectroscopic and synchrotron methods as well as atomic force microscopy.
- Modelling mineral systems, including thermodynamic and molecular dynamics simulations.
- Mineral-fluid interaction.
- Amorphous materials.
- Hot topics at the overlap between mineralogical and material science (e.g., zeolites, carbon-phases, perovskite).
- Hot topics in biomineralization.
Development of transferable skills
Written communications skills: The coursework of this course includes a written component, both as practical reports and a scientific abstract writing exercise in which phrasing, grammar etc. is also part of the grading scheme. Students are expected to hand in a first draft on which they receive feedback on the science and writing style from the lecturers before handing in the final version.
Verbal communication skills: During this course, we hold a mini-conference linked to the abstract writing exercise. The students are given a recent scientific article covering one of the areas discussed during the course and must produce a short presentation to teach the rest of the group about the subject. Feedback is given on presentation skills by both the lecturers and the student’s peers.
Problem-solving skills: throughout the lectures and practical sessions students are given tasks that require mathematical, kinesthetic and/or reasoning methods to approach the problems and find the solution. This includes examining/processing data.
Technical skills: the students are introduced to the following analytical techniques during the course: infra-red and Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and interferometry. In addition, the students will work with the following simulation packages: PHREEQC (solution speciation modelling).
Analytical/quantitative skills: Students are given data from TEM, AFM, and Raman spectroscopy investigations to analyse during the practical assignments. The student’s use various analytical programs to analyse the data (Fityk: Raman data, Nanoscope Analysis: AFM) as well as working on paper.
