Collection of minerals and rocks
In 1995, the Mineral and Rock Collection acquired by Prof. Morgante and held in the Mineralogy and Petrography Museum, was moved from the central headquarters of the University of Trieste to Campus San Giovanni, Palazzina O at Via E. Weiss 6. It is currently part of the Mathematics and Geosciences Department. This Collection was one of the first to join the SMATS University Museum System. Considering its importance, it is part of the Italian Association of Scientific Museums (ANMS). The Museum is organised into three exhibition halls, a classroom for lessons and guided tours and a study for cataloguing the rocks and minerals. The three exhibition halls host various collections of rocks and minerals: in the two rooms to the side, the mineralogical-petrographic material is ordered according to the cataloguing procedures or to highlight certain physical properties, such as symmetries, colour, hardness and shape, without neglecting certain phenomena such as polymorphism and various forms, essentially of calcite, present in the caves.
In the two corridors granting access to the Museum, panels are displayed recalling the exhibition on crystallography organised in 2014 (the International Year of Crystallography promoted by UNESCO), whilst nearby, the exhibition has been set up showing the Museum’s latest acquisition: a collection of around 500 samples obtained from various places across the globe. This is precisely why the underlying criterion in the organisation of this latter acquisition is the origin of the samples. Indeed, the four new display units show minerals from Italy, Europe, the Americas and Africa and Asia. In thus doing, the unique characters of numerous samples are highlighted, whose physical and chromatic specificities make them particularly attractive. The last display unit houses common and well-known minerals, which integrate and enrich the various mineralogical classes featured in the Collection.
Guided tours can be arranged by prior reservation, as well as participation in national initiatives, including through the loan of samples, specific laboratories for students of the Mathematics and Geosciences Department.