Three study cases of growth morphology in minerals: Halite, calcite and gypsum

AbstractBeyond fundamental aspects of crystal growth and morphology, the growth of minerals is a challenging subject because in most cases we face a problem with unknown growth conditions. Actually, in the field of geological studies, we have to decipher the growth conditions of a crystal using the information contained in the very crystal. One of these characteristics of crystals that contain information about their growth is their morphology and time evolution. In this article, we introduce the subject of crystal morphology by using three important minerals, calcite, halite and gypsum, as three didactic case studies to illustrate the application of the current knowledge in the field