Students explore for water on Mars using impact crater morphology. During this …
Students explore for water on Mars using impact crater morphology. During this lab, students: learn to use the equation writing and graphing capabilities in Microsoft Excel, thendevelop and apply an impact crater depth-diameter relationship in an effort to constrain the depth to a possible water-rich layer beneath one or more portions of the surface of Mars!
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In this activity, students are introduced to impact processes in a study …
In this activity, students are introduced to impact processes in a study of Meteor Crater in northern Arizona. They are guided in the use of a set of relatively simple formulas from physics to estimate the energy of impact and the size of the impactor that formed the crater.
Click here to view the full activity on the K��yah Math Project website.
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This is a more mathematically advanced version of the Impact Processes activity …
This is a more mathematically advanced version of the Impact Processes activity that introduces students to impact geology in a study of Meteor Crater in northern Arizona. Students use a set of formulas from physics and power regression on real data to determine the energy released on impact and the size of the impactor that formed the crater.
Click here to view the full activity on the K��yah Math Project website.
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This is a five-activity module that explores the evidence for and impacts …
This is a five-activity module that explores the evidence for and impacts of melting glacial ice, with resources from major institutions and scientists who study glaciers -- primarily in Arctic areas. The suite of activities includes both glaciers and melting ice, as well as the impact of melt water downstream. Each activity follows the 5E model of Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration, and Evaluation.
In this exercise, students explore NOAA and the Climate Data Center websites …
In this exercise, students explore NOAA and the Climate Data Center websites that provide information about El Ni��o. The students are then asked interpret a series of maps to describe the key changes in climate conditions during El Ni��o and La Ni��a. Two locations of emphasized: North America and Australia to illustrate the contrast in climatic changes and allow for determination of the impacts close to home.
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Marine mammals rely on sound for their daily existence. Therefore, the introduction …
Marine mammals rely on sound for their daily existence. Therefore, the introduction of anthropogenic noise in the marine environment can have a profound impact on their behavior. Listening to sounds in the ocean is not only important to understand marine mammals behaviour, but also how their behaviour may be influenced by the changing anthropogenic soundscape. In this activity you will use MATLAB to visualise marine mammals and anthropogenic sound with a spectrogram and answer a few questions regarding the the impacts anthropogenic noise on marine mammals.
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Students are asked to make general observations about a geologic photograph both …
Students are asked to make general observations about a geologic photograph both before and after the subject is covered in class, and then compare their observations.
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The ability to make real analytical use of research instrumentation in the …
The ability to make real analytical use of research instrumentation in the classroom via remote operation technologies has the potential to both facilitate instruction and support the intellectual transition of undergraduate geoscience students from passive learner to investigator. However, training students in the use of complex analytical instrumentation is a significant time-sink and potential distraction from learning geoscience content.
We make use of electron microprobe analysis as part of a term project in my Mineralogy/Petrology course on the petrogenesis of metamorphic rocks from the southern Appalachians. To try and get past the instrument-training obstacle, I conduct an extended whole-class activity, running the microprobe live in front of the students to introduce the instrument, its tools and functions, and its quirks and limitations. Beyond a simple demonstration I also have the students direct me in the operation of the microprobe to analyze and identify minerals in an unknown sample, to show them how the instrument is used to investigate a sample, and where the hang-ups and easy mistakes are in trying to conduct EDS or WDS analyses. This attempt at a "group training" activity aims to make students more comfortable when they get the opportunity to run the instrument themselves to collect mineral chemistry data on samples they have collected.
The attached documents: a "script" for using the remotely operable FIU-FCAEM electron microprobe in a whole class demonstration and interactive session, along with a simple exercise for translating microprobe data to mineral formulas,
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"In Search of GLOBE Data" contains two self-paced projects on using the …
"In Search of GLOBE Data" contains two self-paced projects on using the graphing and mapping tools available on the GLOBE Web site (www.globe.gov (more info) ). These sequential how-to guides on searching for schools with usable data include questions inquiring into what the user sees or thinks about the data presented. These questions are intended to stimulate the thinking process. An answer sheet has been provided to assist the facilitator of this activity. These student worksheets are followed by an advanced search for GLOBE data. This is a step-by-step, or click-by-click, how-to guide to help expand the list of tools when searching for GLOBE data. An Advanced Search is also included; however there are no questions associated with this part of the activity. If the user proceeds directly from the Student Worksheets they may be able to construct their own questions when visualizing the data using these advanced tools.
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To prepare for this in-class exercise, students read relevant background material in …
To prepare for this in-class exercise, students read relevant background material in their textbook and then hear a lecture about sources of variation in populations. Students then form small groups (5 individuals per group) and spend time examining specimens sampled from natural populations of three species. They make sketches and discuss the different types of morphological variation seen, then assign different components of the observed varation to the following sources: Genetic, ontogentic, sexual and ecophenotypic.
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Oral reports on paleontologic topics (Note: this resource was added to OER …
Oral reports on paleontologic topics
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Quick review worksheet that has students draw a sequence of illustrations of …
Quick review worksheet that has students draw a sequence of illustrations of what would occur to a syntectonic quart vein, a pebble conglomerate, a rigid object, and a garnet porphyroblast for pure vs. simple shear. I've used this both as a quiz & as an in-class review.
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Short in-class review question about using given strike and dip information to …
Short in-class review question about using given strike and dip information to classify a fold. Stereonets used.
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A toddler wading pool or similar tank is filled with common sand …
A toddler wading pool or similar tank is filled with common sand (available from home improvement stores in bags) to a depth of 15-20 cm. The sand is saturated with a slow inflow and outflow to a floor drain. A 2-inch PVC slotted screen section is buried in the sand near the center of the tank with a capped end at the bottom. Small (1 cm diameter or similar) slotted or perforated PVC or copper tubing are placed as piezometers in the sand at short distances (e.g., 10-20 cm) from the pumping "well." A fountain pump capable of discharging up to 100-150 ml/min is placed within the "well" with adequate discharge tubing to conduct the water to a drain. A stopcock is placed in the tubing to control flow. Alternatively, if the tank of sand is on a very sturdy table, a simple siphon with tubing can be used as a pump. Drawdown is determined by the difference between a pre-pumping level measurement from the top of the "piezometers" and subsequent measurements made in the same "piezometer" at times after pumping starts. Water levels may be measured using chalked wooden rods. Alternatively, a small cork with a slender wooded food skewer marked in millimeter increments can be placed in each piezometers and the students can watch the change in level of the markings relative to the top of the "piezometer." Flow is repeatedly measured using a graduated cylinder. At the start of the test, students or teams of students are assigned to either take water level measurements at a specific piezometer or to measure and control the flow rate. The data are collected on a logarithmically increasing time interval for about an hour. The flow and drawdown data are analyzed by various means (Theis curve, Jacob straight-line method, Bolton curves, etc.) either manually or using AQTESOLV or similar software. Though the drawdowns are small, the data have provided quite reasonable estimates of hydraulic conductivity for the sand.
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I usually begin with a story about lying on a cot looking …
I usually begin with a story about lying on a cot looking up at the stars on a dark night in the mountains, seeing countless stars and the hazy Milky Way stretching across the sky. I talk about how they seem to be part of a celestial dome rising very high above me, and I note that I do not have any way to know, as I am looking at the stars above me, how far they are away from me. I talk about how ancient people used and envisioned the stars. I mention the experiment with the Hubble Space Telescope in which the "darkest" and most empty part of space was imaged, and found to contain countless distant galaxies (search on "Hubble deep field" or go to http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/hdf.html). I mention that this often leads people to consider how insignificant they are in the scheme of things. My feeling is that you are only as significant (or insignificant) as your actions make you. I then talk a bit about how we now know that "visible" matter is organized into atoms, which are very, very small. In a way, they are like the stars in that they seem to be incomprehensibly small, while stars seem to be incomprehensibly large and distant. I then pose the question, "How does the part of this world that we observe and experience on a daily basis fit into a physical reality that spans from the incomprehensibly small to the incomprehensibly large?" I pass-out the blank worksheet "Comparison of Lengths Relevant to Our Universe" to every student, and have them organize into groups of 2-3. The task is to fill-in the exponents corresponding to 9 distances listed in a box on the page, and to locate those distances on the logarithmic scale. I give them a couple of minutes to start working with the page, and then interrupt to ask what they need help with. This usually involves determining one of the lengths involving light years on the board. I let them complete the tasks in their small groups, then I ask group representatives to call-out their results. Working from a set of correct answers, we then discuss the scale. For example, we note that there is a greater difference (in orders of magnitude) between the size of a proton or electron versus the size of a hydrogen atom, and the height of a person and the peak elevation of Mt. Everest. It is usually noted that humans fall near the middle of the length spectrum of the universe, which was also noted by Primack and Abrams (2006). Some students place great importance on this. I tend to note that there is a practical limitation to the size of individual cells that will have predictable functions (they need to be larger than the length scale governed by quantum mechanics) and constraints on the upper size limit of organisms made of cells, which determines where we are on the scale.
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This activity is an easy and fun way to incorporate GPS into …
This activity is an easy and fun way to incorporate GPS into a Field Methods course. It facilitates "asynchronous" learning by enabling urban, non-traditional students with complex schedules to visit field locations.
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This module includes 10 topics related to finding, evaluating, and presenting scientific …
This module includes 10 topics related to finding, evaluating, and presenting scientific information related to climate change or other interdisciplinary topics.
The ultimate goal is for students to prepare a paper and present it to their colleagues as though they were giving it at typical professional meeting such as American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, or American Quaternary Association. However, the technical level of the talk should be at a level that the class will understand and enjoy.
The topic should demonstrate scientific method rather than being merely descriptive or primarily applied science/technology. Students should use current literature. The presentation will be more interesting if the subject is somewhat controversial. The final product should demonstrate that the student understands and has gained the skills presented in all 10 topics.
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Students make simple stress calculations to determine whether deglaciation at the end …
Students make simple stress calculations to determine whether deglaciation at the end of the Pleistocene may have been responsible for a short but dramatic increase in rates of volcanism on Reykjanes in Iceland as a result of depressurization of the underlying mantle.
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Despite the potential benefits of sequential designs, studies evaluating treatments or experimental …
Despite the potential benefits of sequential designs, studies evaluating treatments or experimental manipulations in preclinical experimental biomedicine almost exclusively use classical block designs. Our aim with this article is to bring the existing methodology of group sequential designs to the attention of researchers in the preclinical field and to clearly illustrate its potential utility. Group sequential designs can offer higher efficiency than traditional methods and are increasingly used in clinical trials. Using simulation of data, we demonstrate that group sequential designs have the potential to improve the efficiency of experimental studies, even when sample sizes are very small, as is currently prevalent in preclinical experimental biomedicine. When simulating data with a large effect size of d = 1 and a sample size of n = 18 per group, sequential frequentist analysis consumes in the long run only around 80% of the planned number of experimental units. In larger trials (n = 36 per group), additional stopping rules for futility lead to the saving of resources of up to 30% compared to block designs. We argue that these savings should be invested to increase sample sizes and hence power, since the currently underpowered experiments in preclinical biomedicine are a major threat to the value and predictiveness in this research domain.
It is still unknown whether the cluster of childhood leukemia cases in …
It is still unknown whether the cluster of childhood leukemia cases in east Woburn was caused by TCE and PCE contamination from five known sources of contamination within the capture zones of municipal wells G and H, or whether the leukemias were caused by induced infiltration of Aberjona River water, which may have contained dissolved concentrations of arsenic, chromium, and lead. Several papers have been written about the arsenic, chromium, and lead contamination in Woburn. These papers could be read, combined with a broad discussion about mobility of heavy metals under different oxidation states, hypotheses drawn by the class, and experiments designed by the students to ascertain whether contaminated river water could have reached wells G and H. Designing an experiment to test an hypothesis is a higher-order thinking skill needed by all scientists and engineers.
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