The College of Microscopy Fiber Microscopy Course introduces the principles and practice of polarized light microscopy (PLM) to the identification of natural and man-made fibers. The course will be useful to anyone from a variety of sciences needing to identify fibers: pharmaceutical, textile, conservation, archaeological, and forensic. The students learn time honored and highly specialized PLM methods that can be successfully applied to virtually all types of fibers: vegetable, fur, mineral, and man-made. Allied topics that will be discussed include: fiber loss, shedding, and transfer; sampling and fiber recovery; contamination control; and handling microscopic size fiber fragments. The student learning outcomes are achieved through lecture/demonstration and many practical exercises utilizing known and unknown fiber samples from a variety of industries. The outline below lists all of the major topics that will be presented during the course. John Delly’s new book “Essentials of Polarized Light Microscopy” will be a resource for continuing education in the field of Fiber Identification.
