First activity of the Bcn Student Chapter: a full success !

The first activity organized by the Barcelona SGA Student Chapter, the Pegmatites Workshop, took place last week and it was an absolute success. In fact, the three-day course had a good attendance of both students and professors, and included very interesting talks given by experienced specialists on this topic.

MSc Sandra Amores gave a comprehensive two-hour lesson on the basics of pegmatites during the first day of the workshop (10^th October), which included sample observation of pegmatite characteristic minerals and textures. This lesson was considered to be very positive by the students, in special by those that had never heard of pegmatites. The effort of Sandra is gratefully acknowledged!

October 11^th was the main day of the workshop. Six talks were given by invited lecturers from France, Portugal, Basque Country and Catalonia. We would like to give our most sincere thanks to Dr Pura Alfonso, Dr Marieke Van Lichtervelde, Dr Alexandre M. Lima, Dr Joan Carles Melgarejo, Dr Salvador Martínez and Dr. Encarnación Roda for their participation in our event.

Finally, on the third day of the workshop we visited the Cap de Creus pegmatitic area. This field trip was led by Dr Joan Carles Melgarejo and Dr Pura Alfonso and allowed us to visit several types of pegmatites. It was a great opportunity to understand the formation and evolution mechanisms of these bodies, the mineral zoning, and even to learn some exploration tricks on the identification of the more evolved pegmatites: watch out for mitridatite!!

From our point of view, the event was an awesome experience as organizers, and we hope that it was profitable for all the students from Catalonia, Portugal and Angola that attended the course.

You can see some pictures here, courtesy of Omar Corrales, member of the Barcelona Student Chapter.