How can the equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics of minerals be understood from their atomic-scale structural features? How can they be predicted, simply from models for the forces between atoms? Advances in analytical theory, statistical mechanics, experimental solid-state science, computational power, and the sophistication of a mineralogical approach that brings all of these together, means that these questions, once imponderable, are now realistically tractable. These questions have been exercising the minds of mineralogists over the last decade or so, and have motivated many developments in the science. Acting as way-markers along the path, there are a number of publications which have followed from meetings where these questions have been addressed. It is now twelve years since the publication of Microscopic to Macroscopic, an edition of Reviews in Mineralogy (Kieffer and Navrotsky, 1985) that sought to identify the fundamental controls on the bulk properties of minerals in terms of their atomic-scale characteristics.
Contraction of polymer gels created by the activity of molecular motors
