Resources for Teaching Petrology
Resources for classroom, lab, and field
- Activities and Examples of educational resources used in igneous and metamorphic petrology classes, including classroom activities, lab exercises, problem sets and more.
- Visualizations that can be useful in teaching about petrology.
- Internet Resources useful for designing and teaching petrology courses, including lecture notes and PowerPoint presentations with images, illustrations and diagrams, course syllabi, projects, and online galleries of photomicrographs.
- Analytical Instrument Database useful for researchers, lab managers, instructors and students looking to gain access to analytical instruments such as SEM, electron microbeam, x-ray diffraction, x-ray fluorescence and more.
- How do you teach your petrology course? Enter your course information into our course goals and syllabus database.
- What topics are being taught in petrology courses? See the results (Excel 32kB Apr20 04) of a 2003 faculty survey.
Announcing New Content for Faculty and Students
Table of Contents
You can now browse the entire collection of teaching activities by topic!
Click to enlarge. Image courtesy of Dex Perkins.
Geochemical Data Plotting Programs
A collection of programs used to plot whole-rock geochemical data (e.g. Harker, REE, "spider", tectonic discrimanant diagrams), quadrilateral plots, and plots of isotopic data.
Teaching Petrology Using the Primary Scientific Literature
A compilation of articles from the scientific literature recommended by colleagues for use in petrology classes, with examples of suggested teaching strategies.
Minerals, Inclusions and Volcanic Processes
A thematic collection of teaching resources and activities that was developed for the 2008 Mineralogical Society of America/Geochemical Society Reviews in Mineralogy short course held at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Teaching Phase Equilibria
This web-based learning resource provides a comprehensive introduction to heterogeneous phase equilibria in the geosciences. This site contains the essential background information needed to understand phase equilibria, links to related resources, examples of worked problems, and teaching activities.
Some of the highlights of this module include:
- Descriptions, definitions and worked examples of standard topics like the Clapeyron Equation or deriving and balancing metamorphic reactions
- Phase diagrams for teaching, which contains pdf files of common phase diagrams, plus animated versions that take students step-by-step through the reactions
- User-friendly tutorials for modern thermodynamic modeling programs such as ThermoCalc, MELTS, TWQ and Perplex.
Geochemical Instrumentation and Analysis
This project provides an on-line tutorial of the analytical techniques commonly used to characterize geological materials. The goal is to help novices (such as students or scientists working out of their field) to gain an understanding of mineralogical, petrological and geochemical analytical techniques. This module covers X-ray crystallography, electron microbeam, elemental analysis, mass spectrometers and more. See the entire list of techniques covered on this site.April 2007 special volume of Elements Magazine
This issue covers teaching mineralogy, petrology and geochemistry. To complement this volume, we have developed the Elements Bibliography that includes an extensive collection of articles, teaching activities, on-line resources, and related information on the scholarship of teaching.Mineralogy-petrology-geochemistry community discussion
Visit the discussion board to submit your recommendations to identify the most significant contributions made in these fields to the geosciences, the larger scientific enterprise and to society. Post a new topic or add to existing topics to create a threaded archive to demonstrate the relevance, importance and centrality of mineralogy, petrology and geochemistry to the geosciences and beyond.Email List
Join the email list to take part in discussions with colleagues who teach petrology and to read past discussions.Presentations from the Teaching Petrology workshop
During the summer of 2003, participants from around the country met in southwest Montana for a week of workshops and field trips to explore new methods of teaching igneous and metamorphic petrology in the context of modern advances in understanding the Earth system, analytical and field methods, and information technologies. Review the program guide to download materials from the workshop, including field trip guides for the Stillwater Complex, Archean Basement of the Beartooth Block, Tertiary Volcanism in the Absaroka Volcanics, and the Yellowstone Caldera. Also find supporting materials, demonstrations of teaching activities, and discussion group summaries.Registry of Analytical Equipment
If you conduct research using geochemical analytical equipment and would like to share access to the equipment at your institution, please add your instrument to our analytical instrument database using our easy-to-follow instrument registry.2003 Teaching Petrology Workshop
A NAGT workshop on Teaching Petrology in the 21st Century was held in July 2003 at and around Montana State University. The workshop attracted 75 faculty members from across the country. Highlights of the workshop were a 3-day field trip to the Stillwater Complex, the Beartooth Plateau and Yellowstone National Park, followed by 4 days of on-campus demonstrations, discussions and working group sessions.
View the workshop program guide with the agenda and links to materials and presentations from the workshop.
