# Conclusion

By studying this course you have been introduced to the most common technique used by geologists to study minerals in rocks in order to understand geological processes such as rock formation, rock deformation, weathering and metamorphism. It's a science known as mineralogy. Mineral composition, structure and microtextures all contain clues to the processes of rock formation, and the recognition, identification and classification of minerals is a key skill for geologists.

This course should have helped you to understand the background to mineral formation, recognition and classification, and introduced the use of the polarising microscope, a tool that still forms the bedrock of many geological investigations. Activities using the microscope, delivered using a virtual microscope system, provided the opportunity to acquire some of the core skills for any further geology studies.

If you'd like an interactive overview of the geological makeup of the landscape of the British Isles, take a look at our Geology Toolkit.

OpenLearn - An introduction to minerals and rocks under the microscope
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.