February 25, 2022
K-State PetCat Scan facility featured by major microscope manufacturer Zeiss
Moving from in-person to online teaching has been a requirement for most faculty worldwide over the past two years, but for some disciplines, this mode of instruction presents significant challenges. This is especially true for geology, where physical interaction with rock or mineral samples is deemed essential to the curriculum and is essential for much solid earth research.
PetCat Scan, funded by a National Science Foundation RAPID grant to geology faculty members and principal investigators Brice Lacroix, Matthew Brueseke and Pamela Kempton, established a high-definition thin section scanner that is aiding faculty in geoscience departments in our region to generate high-quality online resources for their classes at rates much faster than can be done by manual methods.
The success of the project has been recognized by microscope manufacturer Zeiss, who interviewed lead PI LaCroix. He described how PetCAT-Scan is enabling quantitative petrography for teaching and research.