Welcome!

Hey everyone! Welcome to Earth Optics – a series of instructional videos and exercises developed for geology students learning optical microscopy in mineralogy labs. It’s hard to know what you’re looking for when you first start using the microscope, and these videos are designed to help out mostly with microscope skills, while touching on some of the concepts typically taught in labs. The four units are linked above, starting with plane polarized light and ending with biaxial minerals.

Earth Optics was created in 2015. Funding and support for this project was provided by the Earth and Environmental Sciences department at Vanderbilt University, the Center for Teaching (CFT) and the Center for the Integration of Teaching at Learning (CIRTL) as part of a Blended and Online Learning Design (BOLD) Fellowship also at Vanderbilt University.

All videos hosted on YouTube have Creative Commons licenses and are meant to be shared! Closed Captioning in English is provided.