This module teaches basic concepts in igneous petrology through relating hand specimen identification of lavas to major element geochemistry, using the Central American volcanic arc as an example.

Think-pair-share and jig-saw activity asking students to study and compare subsidence curves from different tectonic settings.

The software package known as SHAPE (Shape Software 521 Hidden Valley Road, Kingsport, TN 37663) provides an excellent method for accurately drawing crystals. The following three boxes describe the basic steps involved in using SHAPE. Refer to these instructions when completing the exercises.

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This assignment is meant to illustrate how the advection of heat by groundwater leads to the elevated temperatures at shallow sedimentary basin margins at which Mississippi Valley-type Zn-Pb hydrothermal ore deposits are formed. The assignment is based on analytical solutions for groundwater flow and heat transport published by Domenico & Palciauskas (1973). Students use a spreadsheet to calculate and plot the flow field and temperature in a sedimentary basin, and to investigate the conditions needed to produce ore-forming temperatures. These results have further implications for the length of time available for ore formation and the concentration of metals and pH of the groundwater, which are also explored in the assignment. The assignment provides an example of how groundwater plays a fundamental role in an important geologic process in the Earth's crust. The activity also shows the linkages of hydrology to other disciplines such as heat transport, geochemistry, and economic geology.

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An interactive powerpoint presentation walks students step-by-step through the process of generating a Korjinski diagram for the system K20-Al2O3-SiO2. Students will use the triangular diagram from the previous exercise to determine which minerals have stability boundaries on the diagram. A second tutorial explains how to plot a natural water composition on the diagram. A Word document provides the thermodynamic data and instructions necessary to create their own diagram for the Ca0-MgO-SiO2 system. An answer key is also provided.

An interactive powerpoint presentation walks students step-by-step through the process of generating a triangular diagram for the system K2O-Al2O3-SiO2. A Word document provides the thermodynamic data and instructions necessary to create their own diagram for the CaO-MgO-SiO2 system. An answer key is also provided.
Students will:
- Calculate mineral compositions in mole percent and plot on a triangular diagram.
- Determine which is the stable mineral at the apices.
- Draw in all possible tie-lines connecting coexisting minerals.
- Eliminate unstable collinear phases.
- Eliminate crossing tie-lines.
- Determine stable mineral assemblages for bulk-rock compositions provided.

A quantitative skills-intensive exercise using data from the Mineral Mountains, Utah, to calculate mass balance and to address the "space problem" involved with emplacing plutons into the crust.

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This activity from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific asks students to compress all of time (from the Big Bang until now) into one year.
First, they have to pick major events (younger students can be given them) - this can lead to lively discussion! You can certainly be adaptable here.
Second, the best thing to do is have the students guess where each event should be on the Cosmic Calendar.
Third, have them look up or be given the actual time period when the event occurred.
Fourth, have them calculate (or be given) the "date" on the Cosmic Calendar.
Fifth, discuss! Debate! Reflect!

Files cannot be uploaded as they are copyrighted but they are easily found and freely available.
Authors: Therese Puyau Blanchard, Andrew Fraknoi, and the staff of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
URL: http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/astro/act2/H2_Cosmic_Calendar.pdf

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Students are given two questions for each concept, in which they must (1) calculate the composition of minerals in weight percent given relative proportions of given end members and (2) calculate mole percentages for feldspars based on their mineral analyses (provided).

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As part of the Berkeley Museum of Paleontology site, this page provides general information about earth systems of the Cretaceous Period. The site contains text, supporting diagrams and links to more detailed resources concerned with plate tectonics and past climates. Specific topics covered in this site include the rifting of Pangea, global climate, appearance and diversification of angiosperms, end of Cretaceous extinction and Chicxulub impact.

Students receive a "Dear Colleague" letter requesting the review of a journal article in the same format as would be received from an Assistant Editor of a major scholarly journal. The letter outlines the requirements of the review and the due date. Students also receive the review forms typically provided by a given journal (I've provided forms from the Geological Society of America Bulletin and American Mineralogist for use in an upper division course in Mineralogy, Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology. The GSA Bulletin form is better suited for manuscripts that report on articles that have a significant field or tectonic component; the American Mineralogist form is better suited for articles that focus on more analytical, theoretical, or computational applications in mineralogy and petrology.

In an upper division petrology class, I typically select articles for review that integrate numerous aspects of topics we've recently covered in class; tectonic setting, field relations, petrography, whole-rock geochemistry, geo- and thermochronology, mineral chemistry (for PTt calculations), stable isotope geochemistry, etc. My goal is to help students see how these multiple lines of evidence must be integrated into a coherent geologic interpretation of geologic process or history.

Modify the letter with the request for review and review forms to emphasize the particular course goals, content, and expectations for your own course.

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This exercise is designed to help students understand relationships among external morphology of crystals (their shape and faces), internal structure (unit cell shape, edge measurements, and volume), Hermann-Mauguin notation for the 32 crystal classes, and Miller Indices of forms and faces.

The example and four crystal measurement problems have been drawn using the computer program SHAPE (see both Brock and Velbel, this volume). Both a single drawing and stereo pair are given for each problem. The stereo pair drawings can be used with the normal stereoscope used to read air photographs. The interfacial angles were calculated by the SHAPE program. If you have access to SHAPE you can design other crystal problems or have students generate the crystal drawing on the computer and then make the calculations ask for in this exercise.

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Copper is an element that is essential to our technology and to our standard of living. Commonly, the copper is extracted from a variety of copper-bearing minerals that occur in veins. These fossilized fluid pathways record a complex set of geologic processes with non-linear couplings that are the products of hydrothermal activity associated with igneous intrusions (e.g. heat transport, mechanical fracture, mineral precipitation, permeability changes). By carefully examining a rock slab and its mineralogy, one can decipher the series of interrelated processes and their resultant impact on the final product.

Students set about to determine the relative age of veins by visual examination of the rock slab provided. Several generations of veins are recorded by different colors representing different minerals. Using cross-cutting relationships, they list the veins from oldest to youngest. Based on their color, they determine the sequence of minerals that fill veins. This provides an opportunity to review why color can be used to identify some minerals but not others. Once minerals are identified, their ideal chemical formula allows the percent copper in the mineral to be determined as well as the additional elements that must be present to form the mineral. The consequent change in mineral chemistry can be linked to the alterations in fluids flowing through the fractures by analysis of fluid-mineral equilibria on activity-activity (a-a) diagrams. For the more advanced classes, relevant thermodynamic data can be provided and students can write hydrolysis reactions and calculate the (a-a) diagram themselves.

Interpretation of the geologic history begins with the matrix and initial conditions and follows through rock fracture, fluid flow, mineral precipitation, evolving fluid composition, fracture sealing, pore-fluid pressure buildup, fracture, precipitation, etc. in a series of feedbacks. A feedback diagram can be provided and used as a base-map for interpretation not only of the sequence but changes to each reservoir, or students can be asked to draw the series of events and their reservoirs with the mechanisms of change. In the end, students understand the complex series of geologic processes that must come together in space and time to produce an ore-deposit that can be mined for our use. They also wrestle with the complications of reading the rock record and with the ambiguity of interpreting the interaction of various mechanisms that control the final product.

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Students will view fossils, sometimes with supporting illustrations, and answer questions about them via deductive reasoning. The exercise is highly interactive, with the instructor providing hints and helpful questions. The questions concern ways in which fossil preservation reveals information about things like what kind of organism the fossil represents, how that organism lived, and how the fossil came into being.

A demonstration (with full class participation) to illustrate radioactive decay by flipping coins. Shows students visually the concepts of exponential decay, half-life and randomness. Works best in large classes -- the more people, the better.

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One of the great challenges in teaching undergraduates is finding ways to get them to apply knowledge or skills learned in one class to problems encountered in subsequent classes. Case in point: the use of algebra, trig, and even rudimentary calculus in geology classes! This activity presents practical ways we can use to build student confidence in their ability to peer into the meaning of the equations they encounter in sedimentary geology. These techniques include: (1) Surgical Strike Reviews -- 5 to 10-minute review of relevant math principles at the beginning of the appropriate lecture, (2) Unit Analyses -- assigning fundamental units of Mass, Length, and Time to test whether an equation has been derived correctly or to explore the meaning of derivative units of measure that may be unfamiliar to students, and (3) Perturbation Interrogation -- asking students to identify whether the quantity of interest described by an equation will increase or decrease when individual components of the equation increase or decrease.

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This project involves a field trip to the Jordan Formation in Winona, MN. Student teams are assigned a section of the outcrop from which they are to determine a stratigraphic column. The class then performs a lateral analysis and builds a composite stratigraphic column for the formation. As a final product, the students write up the class's observations about the formation.

Project Webpages

Project Summary and Write-up Outline (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 115kB Jul7 05)
Instructor Notes for Project (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 91kB Jul7 05)
Outlines and Notes (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 1.1MB Jul7 05) for each class session for this project

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Related Links

Supplement for this course

Field-based research projects are the focal point for my course in sedimentary geology. For each offering of the course, projects are selected which will enable students to engage in authentic research and learn fundamental principles of sedimentary geology at the same time. Projects have addressed problems as diverse as sedimentologic processes, paleoenvironmental interpretation, stratigraphic correlation between outcrops and the nature of contacts between units. Each semester, the specific content of the course, how the content is organized, which readings are chosen and selection of laboratory experiences are dictated by the nature of the specific project and are planned to support students in their work on the project. Less content may be "covered" with this approach and topics may not follow a "traditional" order (see syllabus), but students' depth of understanding, skills in scientific reasoning, sense of accomplishment, and growth in confidence are greatly enhanced. Class projects from half of the past four offerings of the course culminated in the presentation of three posters at regional GSA conferences. Results of the other two semesters were not submitted for presentation because the instructor failed to identify problems of adequate significance for the class to investigate. However, these projects did yield data which may be useful in future projects.

Field projects must be chosen carefully so that they a) have the potential to yield results of scientific significance, and b) can be completed within the time-frame of one semester. In addition, it is essential to provide students with experiences that enable them to develop the expertise necessary to gather and make sense of the data. To ensure these conditions, the faculty member should be involved actively as a collaborator in the project. Therefore it is mutually beneficial if the class project is related to the faculty member's research or to a topic of interest to him/her. Guidelines for the development of successful projects are available in the Instructor's Notes file.

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As a culminating assignment in Natural Hazards Planning, students work in teams to create 15-year mitigation strategy for a selected jurisdiction using the FEMA 386 methodology for prioritizing mitigation options.

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