Author: Andrew G. Tindle & Kevin Quick
Published: December 2013
Pages: 136
Interactives: 26 Virtual Microscopes (custom HTML5 widgets) and 42 in-page 3D crystal models
Store description:
The microscope is a fundamental tool that is used in many branches of the Earth Sciences. When a slice of a rock is mounted on a glass slide and thinned, it is possible to see through many minerals and observe their optical properties. The information obtained allows the identification of minerals to be made, and combined with textural information that can also be obtained from thin sections, it is possible to build up a picture of the geological history of a rock.
Unfortunately a microscope capable of providing this information is costly and requires considerable skill to use. The Virtual Microscope team at the Open University have been working for many years to combat this by producing simulation experiences that do not require access to a real microscope.
This multi-touch book contains a collection of 26 minerals that can be viewed as if they were under a polarising microscope. For each mineral there is a basic description covering where the mineral is usually found, distinguishing features, similar minerals, crystal system, colour, form, cleavage, relief, interference colours, extinction and orientation, twinning and zoning, alteration, and classification. Additionally, we have also included fully interactive 3D models of all these minerals. This collection contains many common rock-forming minerals as well as some exotic species.
For those who have never seen minerals in thin section it will be a surprising experience as many provide a real visual treat. Press the auto rotate button and sit back to watch amazing colour changes and zonation patterns. You will be taking the first steps that all geologists make and in the process will see some of the rocks that Charles Darwin collected on the voyage of the Beagle together with other samples from our web-based UK virtual microscope.
Our aims:
With this book we investigated the concept of letting the book's academic author create the book themselves from scratch, using iBook Author, giving them a set of templates and reusable HTML5 widgets to work with. We wanted to see if this was a feasible route for academic author's i.e. whether they could pick up using the iBook Author tool quickly with just a little support and produce a good book in an efficient manner that would then just need a small amount of polishing and tweaking for publishing. The outcome was that this proved a successful trial.
Key features of the book include:
1) Strong design and appearance:
One of the iBook format's strength is the ability to create a 'designed' book. So, as with all the interactive books we are producing, we aim to make the books be as attractive as possible and have as as much visual impact as possible.
2) Template driven design:
Strong use of document templates allowing quick section creation; consistent look and easy document wide design changes.
3) Embedded, interactive 3D models:
The ability to embed interactive 3D models in the book pages was investigated in this book. The book contains details of 26 minerals and for each of these one or two 3D models of crystal forms of the mineral were embedded into the book page (see screenshot above). These models can be manipulated in page by the reader as well as viewing them full screen (as shown below). The ability to interact with objects alongside the text adds greatly to interest of a page bringing it alive.
4) Reusable custom HTML5 widgets:
For this book a custom HTML5 widget was created of a 'Virtual Microscope' allowing the reader to see a thin section of a mineral under a microscope, and be able to rotate the mineral under plain and cross-polarised lighting conditions (the screenshots above show this widget for one of the minerals in-page view and when opened).
As part of the aims to minimise the book teams involvement of authoring. The widget was designed so that the author could create a Virtual Microscope for each mineral by themselves without any significant technical knowledge. This required the author simply adding the images for the mineral into a folder and editing one or two entries in a text file (JSON data).