Teaching Volcanic Petrology

This page provides access to a document that characterizes volcanic rocks in terms of their geologic context, texture, and mineralogy. The document is almost free of rock names and names for rock textures. Rather, rocks labeled by the mineral assemblages they contain and by descriptions of rock textures written in ordinary English.

Many geoscientists graduate from university without the systematic petrology that was part of the background of geologists educated in the last century. The tract tries to furnish the information needed to answer the question, "What is the stuff that came from the volcano that just erupted?" If the person being interrogated doesn't know the answer, they at least know what they have to learn.

The Portable Document Format (*.pdf) files can be read on the screen or printed. To read and print the documents, your computer will have to have Adobe's Acrobat Reader. Adobe Acrobat Reader is furnished free of charge and you can obtain it by clicking on the following button:

The electronic documents can be downloaded to your computer by clicking the links:
Apologia.pdf
NatureVocanicRocks.pdf
The first file explains why I wrote the second one.

A Power Point presentation that summarizes the important points of the program described in the *.pdf files that can be downloaded by clicking on one of the following links:
Budapest.pptx, Budapest.ppt
If you view the pptx or ppt file using 'Presenters Tools' you can read the notes and view the slides. It's the 2nd item under the'Slide Show' menu.