Talk:Dolomite

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I have made a few minor changes to the article on dolomite. Mainly tightening it up and making a few additions. My purpose was to broaden the initial paragraph to cover dolomite (rock) as well as the mineral. It is clear from what follows the initial paragraph that the article covers both the rock and mineral. It is my intention to later make a substantial revision to add considerable material covering the various processes of dolomitization.

I am somewhat uncomfortable with the term "Dolomite Problem" although it is widely used in introductory texts. The "problem" in the past was that there apparently were large volumes of ancient strata that was dolomitized and only rare occurrences of dolomite in Recent sediments. This really is no problem today. During the past 30 years dolomite has been found forming at the surface of the Earth, in the marine environment and in the subsurface all over the world. There are apparently a number of mechanisms by which dolomite forms. I intend to cover these later.

I am also uncomfortable with citing "gray literature" and "internet sources" for compiling an article of this kind. The source article by van Lith et al. (2000) is legitimate but it is only an abstract. I believe that there are more recent publications by this group that can be cited. I am very skeptical about using the self published on line article (book) by Deelman as a source. There likely are some very good reasons why this work has failed to survive peer review and is not published in the formal scientific literature. I would like to rewrite the section on the kinetics of dolomitization. Possibly, it would be best to be less technical here. Even well educated science students usually do not understand concepts like “breaking Ostwald’s rule”. Actually, what is described in that section of the text is “Ostwald’s step rule” so whoever initially wrote it did not understand it either. In any event, more later. Jay Gregg 17:22, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• How about "Dolomite Question". "Problem" seems like it needs to be "fixed" but "questions" can be "answered" ... in many ways. This leaves the issue open to discovery of new deposits, new theories, and anything else that might shed some light in the future. --Emana 23:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dolomite

This should be a letter to the author (s)? of the dolomite text.

I would ask You to to correct the word sulubility and point out the reaction speed as main difference. Dolomite is completely soluble in HCl, no matter if concentrated or dilute, the same as calcite. The difference between both is only the reaction speed, which differs by a factor of 1000 or so. Dolomite is also completely suluble in vinegar, You just have to wait long enough, pulverize it fine enough and heat the acetic acid long enough.

Manfred Weigend, Geologist, from Muenchen, Germany