Educational Resources for Teaching Petrology

The links below will guide users to additional information and supporting educational materials (activities, further information, etc.) for teaching petrology. The resources provided include both SERC and other sites from the World Wide Web.

• Internet Resources - a collection of useful web-based learning materials such as PowerPoint presentations, class notes, links to credentialed sources (e.g. instructor web pages, federal agencies); browseable by topics.
• Optical Mineralogy and Petrography - a collection of teaching resources and activities that include PowerPoint presentations, animations, class notes, problem sets and activities, and links to collections of photomicrographs.
• Teaching Petrology Using the Primary Scientific Literature -- suggested teaching strategies, and a compilation of articles from the scientific literature that have been selected by faculty for use in their igneous and metamorphic petrology courses. Use readings from the primary literature to: provide a historical perspective of our science; promote critical thinking; help students develop analytical and synthetic thinking; demonstrate applications of modern scientific methods and techniques; and prepare students to begin to contribute to our scientific heritage.
  
  
  
• Minerals, Inclusions, and Volcanic Processes -- This website contains a collection of instructional activities to accompany the Mineralogical Society of America and Geochemical Society short course on Minerals, Inclusions, and Volcanic Processes and the Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry Volume 69 of the same name. Minerals and their inclusions provide a valuable archive of volcanic processes,ranging from the depths and temperatures of magma storage, to the rates of magma ascent and the history of magmatic evolution and eruption. This collection includes links to sources of scientific information, tutorials, and teaching activities.
  

Integrating Research and Education

• 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.
  
  
  
• 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.
  
• Geochemical Data Plotting Programs -- This site contains a compilation of geochemical plotting programs used to produce plots such as Harker diagrams, REE plots, "spider diagrams", tectonic discrimination diagrams, quadrilateral plots, and isotopic plots. This list is intended to facilitate representation of geochemical data to support teaching and research in the geosciences.