This is a short activity that uses Google Earth to explore sea-level change as measured by tidal gauges around the world
During this module students use multiple experiences (reading, video,
the outdoors, a survey of their water footprints, writing, and lots of
discussion) to examine how life today, in comparison to pre-industrial
times, makes our connections to water virtually invisible. Students use
the class's water footprint results to find out how agricultural and
industrial water uses link us to people distant in both place and time.
They weigh the consequences of these invisible connections in creating
the lost sense of dependence and responsibility that typifies
unsustainability. Students study the variability of water footprints
within our class to help identify more sustainable personal choices.
They consider the activity of a local watershed association to educate
and involve people in improving the quality of local streams as a model
of how community action can accomplish what individuals cannot.
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This assignment requires students to visit a local geologic feature. Students choose a field site, visit it and observe features such as weathering, rock type, folding, or faulting. At their field site, they are encouraged to make sketches and take photographs. They will turn in a description of the site, geologic origin, and geomorphologic evolution. This assignment is especially useful for non-majors who may not normally be interested in outdoor activities.
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This is a collaborative learning activity based on the documentaries "King Corn" and "Big River" in which students explore and propose solutions to sustainability issues associated with industrial agriculture and food systems.
This exercise is designed to give the students a hands-on experience in which they can relate different orientations of an indicatrix to the different birefringence observed for each orientation. Each student is given a piece of fruit that has the shape of a uniaxial indicatrix - either a kiwi (uniaxial positive) or a tangerine (uniaxial negative). The student follows a set of instructions to insert toothpicks to represent the different indicatrix axes and to draw on the fruit using a permanent marker the circular and principal sections. Then the student is asked a series of questions asking them to determine the birefringence of the mineral for different orientations of the fruit.
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Most introductory geology students have experience identifying hand-sized rock samples in the lab, but never get to see bigger rock exposures outside the classroom. This activity includes takes students to downtown Seattle, where they observe the geology of the building stones within a few blocks of campus. The exercise exposes students to large, polished rock samples in an area where they are familiar, but might not have noticed the rocks before. For students on urban campuses or online geology classes with a limited amount of lab time this is a useful activity.
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Climate change and environmental justice class activity. Designed for students to understand the justice issues surrounding climate change on a global and domestic level.
In this activity, students work in groups to put a set of cartoon cards in order, much in the way that we might assemble a geologic history. The primary goal of the activity is to explore the nature of science in general and the nature of geoscience or historical science specifically, without requiring any content knowledge.
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This activity is designed as both an introduction to GIS and an exploration of topographic steady-state. Students analyze DEMs from Taiwan to extract topographic profiles across the range. They reconstruct a series of datasets presented in Stolar et al., (2007), showing the progression of the range to steady-state as a space-for-time substitution from south to north. Students are expected to relate their observations from the topography to theoretical concepts discussed in class including accretion and uplift, steady-state, and critical wedge theory.
An extension involves developing a simple numerical model in Excel of a mountain range as it progresses to topographic steady-state landscape, allowing students to investigate the rise of a mountain range to steady-state both from Taiwan data and from their numerical model.
This lab is designed to be a highly interactive lab session for a petrology course, where instructors provide a minimal level of essential background and then the entire group works together to explore mineral chemistry. In using a new piece of technology, students can "learn as they go." The point is not to understand every aspect of how an instrument works or to become proficient users, but rather to use the visual impact of the output to catch their interest and advance their analytical skills in the process. I find this lab works very well as a bridge between two semesters of a typical Mineralogy-Petrology sequence. Having completed crystallography, systematic mineralogy and optical, students find this a welcome change of pace and it helps them to start thinking about how mineral associations form the basis of petrology. It is also a great reinforcement and integration of mineralogy and chemistry, allowing you to leap off into crystal chemistry more deeply.
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These are two crossword puzzles that I hand out for extra credit, one for the igneous half of the course and the other for the metamorphic half. The puzzles reinforce concepts, vocabulary, and mineral formulae that we have gone over in class and labs. The students *love* them, and usually end up working on them in groups. Both puzzles were created using the Discovery Channel Puzzlemaker: http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com.
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students are engaged in reflecting on whether plate tectonics is a general theory of planetary organization and evolution. Students use topographic, magnetic, spectral, and other data from NASA and ESA missions to determine whether "Earth-style" plate tectonics is functional on planets and moons elsewhere in the solar system. Students are engaged in a data-rich environment from which they must formulate and test multiple hypotheses. Throughout the process, students are engaged in small groups to identify what they need to learn to answer their questions, what resources are available to them, how best to report their findings, and how they can assess the amount of learning that is taking place.
Students are introduced to sedimentary rocks through field observations and measurements of sediments in different environments. This allows them to proceed from processes to products and engages them through field work in the local area.
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The first problem in this assignment is the culmination of the unit on energy balance and greenhouse gases. The students have already calculated blackbody temperatures as a function of albedo, sun's luminosity and distance from sun. They have also already calculated the magnitude of the greenhouse effect (optical thickness) of the modern atmosphere. In this first problem, the students apply these same calculations to the Faint Young Sun hypothesis and infer what can account for the geological evidence for liquid water on earth since 4.3 Ga. The second problem follows an introductory lecture on radiometric decay and radiometric dating. The students have seen the decay equation and learned what are decay constants and stable versus radioactive isotopes. In this problem, the students apply these concepts to radiocarbon.
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In this activity, students use theoretical knowledge about family stress theories to analyze family vignettes and make predictions about the level of risk or resilience each family might have should a natural disaster occur. To increase resilience, risk communication strategies are discussed.
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Average inquiry level: Guided inquiry
This inquiry-based lab explores the fossil record by having students use various characteristics of fossils to devise a classification scheme and eventually apply the geologic time scale and geographic locations of the fossils. In Part 1, students are given household or classroom-based items to sort into groups for developing their own classification scheme. Part 2 repeats a similar path to a classification scheme of known fossils. In Part 3, the students take their knowledge of classifications schemes to infer the geologic time period and geographic extent of some fantastic prehistoric beasts of the fossil record.
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This short interactive activity has learners to manipulate fault blocks to better understand different types of earthquake-generating faults in different tectonic settings--extensional, convergent, and strike-slip. Fault models aid in visualizing and understanding faulting and plate motions because the instructor and their students can manipulate a three-dimensional model for a true hands-on experience.
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This exercise is based on the information presented in following article:
Bull, W.B., 1984, Tectonic Geomorphology: Journal of Geological Education 32, pp.310-324.
To prepare for the classroom exercise, the instructor briefly presents the concept that measurable landform properties can reflect the intensity of tectonic activity. We discuss that certain landforms and settings are particularly useful in these types of analyses, for example, fault-bounded mountains and piedmonts. The class goes through a quick review of dip-slip faults, fault scarps, and triangular facets, and the Tobin Range is introduced as a typical example of a fault-bounded mountain range. We then ask the question, what are the useful characteristics of these settings in terms of inferring tectonic activity?
To address the question, students work in groups of 2 or 3. Each group is given a set of topographic maps chosen from the following (the region can also be printed from CDs of digital, seamless topo.s, but the quad. names are provided for reference):
7.5 minute quad.s: Home Station Ranch , Jersey Summit , Kennedy Canyon, Mount Tobin , Needle Peak
15-minute quad.s: Mt. Tobin, Buffalo Springs, Cain Mountain
On each map set, two lengths along the fault scarps are marked. One is marked in red and one in purple. Each student group has a map set of a slightly different region, but all map sets have a red fault scarp and a purple fault scarp marked. The red fault scarps in all of the sets are those that have experienced more recent displacement.
Each group is asked to do the following:
1. List physical characteristics of each of the two fault-bounded mountains/piedmonts that are marked on your quad.s with different colors.
2. Decide among yourselves which fault-bounded mountains/piedmont has experienced more recent displacement.
3. Suggest morphometric properties that could be used to differentiate between the more recent and less recent displacement, and explain why each of your properties makes sense. Morphometric properties must be measurable from the topographic maps.
After about 10 minutes, the class reconvenes and we go through the first two questions as a class. Then, each group presents at least one morphometric property and explains their reasoning.
Once we have a list of properties that the class agrees on, the instructor presents and the class discusses the properties that Bull (1984) used in his research of the Tobin Range region, such as sinuosity, the ratio between the valley floor width and the total valley height, the development of triangular facets.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Addresses student fear of quantitative aspect and/or inadequate quantitative skills
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Students interpret data on the faults at Delphi, evaluate the tectonic context of the faults, and explore the proposed connection between faults and the Delphic Oracle of Ancient Greece.
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This activity utilized Visible Geology and Google Earth to help students understand the limitations of using map-view observations of layer offset to interpret types of faulting. Students create and evaluate three fault models in Visible Geology, and compare their results to actual fault offset patterns seen near Las Vegas Bay, NV.
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