Digitization of ores collection and a virtual ore petrography platform
Principal Investigator (PI): Hervé Rezeau, Department of Geosciences
A successful student of mining engineering, geology or any other study focused on rocks needs to know how to recognize, identify and interpret minerals. Students learn to do this in petrography classes where they use special microscopes.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough scopes to go around and they are prohibitively expensive. They require in-person work in a classroom or lab. The need to share physical microscopes among several students reduces the time each student can spend studying specimens.
This project aims to start digitizing the UArizona’s massive ores collection that fills three rooms of drawers housing ore deposits from around the world. The funding will support a student research assistant and purchase photography equipment and polished thin sections.
In addition to photographing specimens, the project will develop a virtual ore petrography platform. This website would have a catalog of rocks. Each rock could be examined as a specimen and several polished thin sections under different types of light. Each section will have notes on special features. Videos would allow examiners to rotate the sections 360 degrees to observe mineral optical properties, just as they would do with physical microscopes.
This resource will enhance the online courses that students will attend at the school of mine and mineral resources.
For more information on this project, please contact: Hervé Rezeau