In this lab, students investigate groundwater flow and water quality within a groundwater well field on the CSU campus. The well field is part of the GroundWater Education and Teaching (GetWET) Observatory south of the Hilton Inn off Centre Drive. Students determine water flow paths and rates as well as measure water quality parameters such as water temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, and dissolved oxygen.

Materials needed for this lab include:

Groundwater equipment: Groundwater well or wells adjacent to a perennial stream.
Water quantity equipment: Electronic water meter, staff, plate, tape, stop watch, and float to measure surface velocity.
Water quality equipment: pH, temperature specific conductance, and dissolved oxygen meters, bailer, and bucket to collect samples.
Other equipment: Map of site showing location of wells and stream.

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This research paper assignment is designed for my Junior level Hydrology course for majors. The intent of the project to to make sure my students can conduct literature reviews, outline a research project and obtain practice in formatting their work for publication. Getting my students prepared to enter the workforce and/or graduate school with these skill sets is imperative for their future success, since in the sciences we write more than we conduct research.

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Play-Doh model of sedimentary layers cut by a dike

Provenance: Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Students make Play-Doh models of sills and dikes.

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This activity introduces students to loading and plotting data in MATLAB. Students explore scalar and vector time series and profile data commonly used in the field of Oceanography using data sets from publicly available sources or that they collected in local waters.

This is short problem set to be used in class. It helps focus discussion, while providing a starting point for discussing mineral reactions and phase diagrams. Students are exposed to ternary composition diagrams and to phase diagrams. They are also introduced to the phase rule, although in quite a superficial way.

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The exercise uses an inquiry-based approached to overcome the fear of tackling mineral identification. Few instructions are given and students discover for themselves how to approach identification.

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Play-Doh model of a fenster

Provenance: Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Students use Play-Doh to explore the map patterns created by faulting + erosion. We begin with simple scenarios and progress to more complex possibilities.

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Play-Doh model, upright anticline

Provenance: Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Students make Play-Doh models of synclines and anticlines, including one of a plunging fold. They use these models to answer questions about what these structures look like in map view and cross-sectional view.

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To prepare for this assignment students will have already done magnitude calculations, particularly body-wave magnitude where the concept of reading amplitude and P-wave period will have been practiced. Prior to this activity the students will have had a quiz on calculating body-wave magnitude given a seismogram.
The primary outcome of this activity is to understand the difference in what body-wave magnitude measures, compared to what moment magnitude measures and the merits of each.

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Students learn about sound propagation in the ocean through instructor-guided problem solving. The activity promotes a conceptual understanding of the physical and chemical factors that influence ocean acoustics, with applications to how whales communicate over long distances. The activity serves as a way to introduce the topic of ocean sound.

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This is a basic introductory online exercises that introduces students to digital topographic maps. Students download a geoPDF from the National Map and install the TerraGo geoPDF toolbar. They use the toolbar to conduct a series of measurements. Students then import the historical topographic map layer into Google Earth and use a variety of tools to conduct measurements.

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In this lab students interpret bathymetric, topography, sea floor ages, and earthquake distributions to reinforce concepts about the different types of plate boundaries. Each student must interpret several sets of data to determine the location and type of plate boundary. To develop a set of basic analytical skills, the students draw several diagrams and graphs to reinforce the data presented in figures. Students are also asked to think critically about plate rates and what happens to the crust at the different plate boundaries. This activity uses online and/or real-time data and has minimal/no quantitative component.

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Overview: This exercise serves as an introduction to histograms. Students are given a short introduction to histograms in lecture and reading. They are then broken up into different groups of 3-5 students. Students start by making a prediction about the distribution of the weights of the pennies they have been given. Each group then weighs their pennies and: 1) enter their data into a spreadsheet of results for the entire class and 2) each student must draw a histogram of their own results. Each group must then interpret their graphs and each student must explain in writing how their graphs either confirms or disproves their initial predictions. While students are working, the instructor creates a histogram of the data from the entire class. After students have completed the written part of the assignment, each group gives a short summary of their predictions, their results, and their conclusions.
Results: The students find that 2 sets of pennies have overlapping weights (mean = 2.5 g, stdev = 0.2 g), while the third set is slightly different (mean 3.1 g, stdev = 0.2 g). The instructor can then lead a discussion around the topic of variability and how to statistically evaluate whether or not different data sets are statistically similar. This discussion should include how to account for instrumental error. This leads into a discussion of the meaning of mean values and standard deviation. This discussion can also include a comparison of how the results from an individual group compares with the data set from the whole class: this serves as a good place to discuss how scientists determine how much data to collect for a given project. This and similar exercises are thus needed before students start to interpret their own data. Expected Outcomes: Students will gain an understanding of how to read a histogram and how to evaluate the meaning of mean values and standard deviations.

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In this activity, students are introduced to locating and reading peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. It helps ease students into the process of locating, reading, and using journal publications. This activity can be done entirely in class or a combination of in-class with homework assigned. It is a helpful way to lead students toward searching for and using the peer-reviewed literature in their own research.

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This is a series of three lab exercises integrating seismic interpretation and sedimentary geology. Each lab uses freely available software from dGB Earth Sciences, OpendTect. The seismic volume is the F3 Block in the North Sea, which is publicly available via dGB's Seismic Repository. The software is very user-friendly. The exercises are written so that no experience is needed using the software prior to the labs. Students are guided through the program as they answer questions on sedimentology, stratigraphy, geomorphology, structural geology and petroleum geology.

Please refer to uploaded file.
Addresses student fear of quantitative aspect and/or inadequate quantitative skills

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This is a specimen-based lab exercise that is designed to introduce students to the different types of skeletal systems of animals and the paleobiological information they encode.

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Students construct structure contour lines for a "dipping bed" in our classroom and on a geologic map. In my class, this is a multi-day activity.
In part 1 of this exercise, students use "topographic contours" and "outcrop locations" marked on the side walls of the classroom (mimicking a slot canyon) to develop their conceptual understanding of structure contours lines. They sketch a structure contour map of the "outcropping unit" and use this map to calculate the dip of the unit. The unit in question is a planar dipping bed.

Play-Doh model, structure contour lines marking a dipping contact

Provenance: Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
In part 2, I revisit the definition of structure contour lines and pass around Play-Doh models of a dipping contact, cut by a valley, with structure contour lines marked by toothpicks.
In part 3, students construct structure contours for one unit on a geologic map. It is a map of several planar dipping beds, with some modest topography. In preparation for this, we spend significant time talking through the process of analyzing the geologic map to make sure we understand it correctly. After this discussion, I show them a Play-Doh model of the map area.

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This exercise is intended as a group exercise to help students learn the fundamentals of using ternary phase diagrams. It is a much better way for students to learn about the diagrams than to lecture to them. Good students will be able to walk through this with little assistance from the instructor.Weaker students will struggle and need help from peers or instructors. The entire exercise takes 1-2 hours for most.

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