Volume 8 of Reviews in Mineralogy treats a Short Course in Kinetics which brings together the
fundamentals needed to explain field observations using kinetic data. It is hoped that this
book may serve not only as a reference for researchers dealing with the rates of geochemical
processes but also as a text in courses on geochemical kinetics. The book is organized with a
rough temperature gradient in mind i.e. low temperature kinetics at the beginning and igneous
kinetics at the end. However the topics in each chapter are general enough that they can be
applied often to any geochemical domain: sedimentary metamorphic or igneous. The theory of
kinetics operates at two complementary levels: the phenomenological and the atomistic. The
former relies on macroscopic variables (e.g. temperature or concentrations) to describe the
rates of reactions or the rates of transport the latter relates the rates to the basic forces
operating between the particular atomic or molecular species of any system. This book deals
with both descriptions of the kinetics of geochemical processes.
