Check out the video atlas of minerals in thin section introduction page for some background on how these videos were prepared and processed, and for additional useful information on the included table content, the search tab, and other user-adjustable features. There is also an accompanying illustration to assist viewers with determining 2V° values from the BxA or optic axis figures in the “optic figures” videos.

Note: Despite the videos being externally linked, depending on the speed of your internet connection, it could still take a minute or two for the full table to load.

To preview or play a video here at the featured thumbnail scale, click the gray play button (which turns blue when you hover over it). Move the cursor off the video and after a few seconds the play button will be hidden. The video can be paused and restarted by subsequent clicks. With some desktop browsers (for example, newer versions of Safari), a “picture-in-picture” option is available to view the videos at a larger scale; the picture-in-picture can be resized by dragging its corner. On desktop or laptop computers, if you’ve selected a video and prefer to watch it full-screen, a full screen button should be available, but in some browsers the button may be hidden. In the latter case, right-click (PC) or control-click (Mac) and select “open frame in new window (or new tab)” from the menu. You’ll initially get a “Sorry, because of its privacy settings, this video cannot be played here” error message, but you’ll also get access to the blue “view on Vimeo” button, which will lead you to where the video is hosted on Vimeo and where you’ll get a variety of viewing and sharing options. On tablets and phones, videos should play in full screen mode by default. On some desktop browsers as well, the thumbnails may also expand to play full screen, for example after a subsequent “play” click of the video.

The Vimeo-hosted versions of these video are also search-engine discoverable, and can be found by searching for the term “thin section” coupled with the sample number (e.g. “thin section FKM-49”), with or without also including the accompanying mineral name. YouTube-hosted versions of these videos are no longer search-engine discoverable (in protest of YouTube polluting even short educational videos with non-optional ads… grrr!), but can still be found organized in playlists on my rockPTX YouTube channel.