The exhibition series "Mineral of the Month"

The Geological Museum's exhibition series "Mineral of the Month" is scheduled to last all 2007, 2008 and 2009.

On the first Tuesday of each month we open a new exhibition about a mineral or a mineral group, focussing on recent research and the use of the minerals and their importance in our every day life.

 
Gypsum

Specimens from the museum storage

The Mineral Collection of the Geological Museum consists of more than 158,000 specimens from all over the world and dates back to the middle of the 17th century.

Besides displaying the collection it is also the Geological Museum's task to store a systematic collection for research. The collections function as an archive of all the minerals of the world and scientists from all over the world have access to the collections in connection with research projects.

The extent of the museum's mineral collections does not make it possible to exhibit all specimens, which means that some of the collections are normally not open to the public. One purpose of the exhibition series is to display some of the many beautiful minerals, which are normally not shown to the public. 

Quartz 

Past, present and future 

Mineralogy is one of the corner stones of geology and dates far back in history. Already Aristotle (384-322 BC) was occupied with minerals in his work Meteorologica - he did not distinguish particularly between minerals, rocks and fossils. His pupil Theophrastus (372-287 BC) was the first one to write a proper article about mineralogy.

Today we know more than 4,000 different minerals from all over the world and many of them have become an inseparable part of our existence, although ordinarily very few people think about it. We are surrounded on all sides by the results of mineralogical research and the mapping of mineral occurrences - e.g. in such diverse objects as buildings, washing powder, tooth paste, paper, bulbs, smoke alarms, computers, cell phones and a thousand other objects from everyday life, which we are so used to that we hardly consider from where the components come and why they work as they do.

They are some of the results of basic research during the centuries.

Research is still intensely done in minerals - both in Denmark and in the rest of the world. As we develop new techniques and more and more precise analytical methods, it becomes possible to describe new properties of the minerals we have already discovered and discover completely new minerals and mineral varieties.

The continued exploration of the minerals and their properties are closely connected to the continued welfare in our civilized world. The energy sector, the environment and treatment of diseases are just a few of the many areas, in which mineralogical research are and may become important.

In other words: Mineralogy is not a dusty science that has stopped developing and contributing to the surrounding society. This is one of the things that this exhibitions series wishes to emphasize.