The following animations are those referred to in papers published in the Journal of Geoscience Education (November 2002) and the Journal of the Virtual Explorer (in review 2002).  I have found them useful in my introductory structural geology class.  If you can think of other animations that might be useful in teaching concepts of strain, but don't have the programming background, then please let me know.  I will be happy to work with you on developing any animation that might allow our students to better understand strain or other concepts of structural geology.

Definition of deformation - Figure 1

Example of stretch and elongation - plane strain - Figure 2

Homogenous versus heterogeneous strain - Figure 3

Example of angular shear strain and shear strain - simple shear- Figure 4

Derivation of transformation equation for simple shear - Figure 5

Derivation of transformation equation for pure shear - Figure 6

Example of particle paths taken during pure and simple shear  - Figure 8

Example of lines of no finite longitudinal strain -  pure shear - Figure 9

Example of lines of no finite longitudinal strain - simple shear - Figure 10

Strain Machine - Figure 7