This site from Jane Selverstone at the University of New Mexico features a comprehensive three part PowerPoint short course on teaching optical mineralogy. The first lab examines the way light passes through a petrographic microscope and what minerals do to this light, while the second lab focuses on how the physical orientation of a grain in a thin section affects its optical properties. The final lab covers cleavages, twinning, extinction angles, habit, and how to read the optical summaries in Nesse's optics book. Each presentation is a large file and may take a few minutes to download, but is well worth the wait.
