RC Competition Guidelines

The competition is held on a biennial basis and the process is facilitated by a committee set up by the CMS. Two years prior to the competition, the committee chooses a Principal Organizer who is responsible for preparing the mineral mixtures and conducting and judging the competition. So far, the winner of the immediate past competition has volunteered to organize the next event. Should the winner be unable to organize the competition, prior organizers would be willing to continue with arranging the event. Specific guidelines are described below:

Types of Mineral Samples

The actual sample make-up is left to the discretion of the organizer, but with the following guidelines:

• Samples should be artificial clay-bearing rock mixtures representative of minerals usually found in natural sedimentary rocks.
• High-purity minerals should be obtained from private and public collections.
• Samples should be prepared such that the purity of the minerals used in the mixture is known within 1 wt%.
• A repeatable sample splitting procedure should be used and splits should be verified for consistency using XRD and XRF prior to sample distribution.

Competition Rules

1. No qualitative information is given out. Therefore participants are expected to provide both qualitative and quantitative evaluations of all the samples.
2. All analytical methods are allowed for mineral identification and quantification but the use of routine methods applied in each participant's laboratory is encouraged.
3. A short description of the analytical procedure used must be reported together with the results.
4. Participants are encouraged to provide estimated errors of their analysis.
5. Participants are encouraged to report the phase composition in as much detail as possible even though minerals are grouped to streamline mineral names when judging. Extra information provided can be useful to break ties.
6. Not less than one month prior to the CMS meeting, entries are to be returned to the organizer for evaluation and judging. The judging criteria are decided by the principal organizer based on the compositions of the pure mixtures. The entry with the smallest sum of absolute errors for the three samples provided will be the winner. In the event that several entries are within established uncertainties in the compositions of the pure mineral mixtures, the principal organizer liaises with the committee to impose stricter judging criteria to select the top finishers.
7. After all the entries have been returned to the organizer, the true compositions of the samples and the mineral standards are made available to the participants.
8. Prior to the CMS meeting, participants are provided with an anonymous ranking of all the results.
9. Participants who do not wish to submit results are asked to return the intact samples to the principal organizer for redistribution.
10. The top three finalists are announced at the CMS meeting and presented with commemorative plaques and the winner is presented with the Reynolds Cup. The cup is held by the winner until the next competition. The identities of the remaining contestants are kept confidential.