The primary purposes of this exercise are to assemble a collection of fossils in the field, to gain experience in fossil identification, to interpret the mode of life and environment in which the organisms lived, and to present this in a written format . This exercise is designed to sharpen the observational skills that are steadily developed during lab and integrate them with lecture concepts.

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This project is based on either a class field trip, or an assigned topic in structural geology. In either case, the students are responsible for representing their experiences in the form of a comic or graphic novel. The experience is therefore largely visual, but it gives students an opportunity to translate their thoughts into a non-traditional medium.

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Ithaca NY is currently located in a tranquil mid-continental geologic setting. But Ithaca's past was anything but tranquil. Would you believe that we once sat beneath a mile-thick sheet of ice? Or that it was once the bottom of the ocean? In a zone of high seismic activity? Or volcanic eruptions? It's all true. On this field trip to Enfield Glen, in Upper Treman State Park, we will make measurements and observations that allow us to reconstruct some of the events in the geologic past of this locality. Was New York always on the east coast of North America? Come on, let's find out.

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This is a lesson about living on the Moon. Learners will use cooperative learning skills to design a self-sufficient lunar station.

We anticipate that hikers will start from Dunraven Pass at 8:00 AM. Hikers should return to the vans at 12:00 PM, from there we will go to a picnic area for lunch. All hikers must therefore turn around and head for the vans no later than 10:45. Because of these strict time limitations, there will probably not be
sufficient time to examine the rocks in as much detail as one would hope. The trip is thus largely a self guided tour. It will, nevertheless, give you an opportunity to examine several rock types associated with calc-alkaline composite cones and provide a spectacular view of the Yellowstone Caldera, weather permitting.

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Our Geology department traditionally has had a strong field emphasis. We are striving to strike a balance in our curriculum. We emphasize geological skills, field observation and data collection, laboratory and analytical skills, computation and modeling, and scientific writing and presentation.

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Lectures which precede this activity cover the different fossil groups, time period & depositional environment of the localities, as when as basic ecology & biodiversity. During class, the students go on a field trip to fossil localities to collect their data. Back in class, the students use the primary literature, fossil id books and web-based resources like Paleontology Portal to identify their fossil organisms. They perform a quantitative analysis of biodiversity, and reconstruct the paleocommunity based on their data and the literature. The end product is a scientific-style paper.

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In this activity students use published data from the Massachusetts Military Reservation to observe and predict mass transport parameters.

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In-service teachers learn about environmental geology and how to teach earth science using outdoor activities and resources near their schools.

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These assignments represent scaffolding for a self-directed final project.

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In this activiy when property rights are absent participants have financial incentive to take what they can get immediatly as opposed to waiting until the resource is more valuable. Adding strong property rights provides the proper finanacial incentives for students to wait to extract the resource when it is most valuable.

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This Evolution video segment depicts the landmark hominid fossil finds by Don Johanson and his team in Ethiopia.

Preparation for this activity is done during the class discussion on current events. Prior to this class, students are required to look through the newspapers and browse the internet for a list of events. During the class, student groups share their list with the class. Each group then categorizes the larger list. This discussion is extremely useful for shedding light on the connectivity and complexity of human relationships from the individual to nations. Students are then asked to propose why these current events are occurring. For example, immigrant students in my course discuss scarcity of resources leading to conflict and civil war in their home countries. Other students will bring the idea of global economy and the effects of globalization on their cultures. The discussions that emerge from this activity are significant for all students involved. In addition to increased student awareness, this activity underscores the importance of integrated learning. Uses geophysics to solve problems in other fields

This activity involves plotting and comparing monthly data on atmospheric C02 concentrations over two years, as recorded in Mauna Loa and the South Pole, and postulating reasons for differences in their seasonal patterns. Longer-term data is then examined for both sites to see if seasonal variations from one site to the other carry over into longer term trends.

In this structural geology activity, students are faced with a problem whose solution requires an understanding of faults. Using inductive reasoning and a set of wood blocks, students discover a general rule about faults and then apply that rule to the specific problem.

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Please refer to attached document.
Uses online and/or real-time data
Addresses student fear of quantitative aspect and/or inadequate quantitative skills

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A few PowerPoint or Keynote slides are used to set the historical context of the project and to introduce the general problem (see "Presentation Files" and "Instructors Notes" below). Bouncing a rubber ball in class from differing heights above the floor, and letting students see and hear the effects of differing travel times, helps students understand that longer travel time in a reflection experiment indicates a deeper reflector. The relevant parts of YouTube videos are shown (see links under "Other Materials" below). Have the students measure the time interval between the explosion and the impact a few times while showing the videos. One of the correspondents talks about (and attempts to show) how the bridge vibrated after the explosion.
Pass out the worksheet and the raw seismograms related to the Hoan demolition experiment. Then, with a copy of the seismograms projected onto the screen, hold an initial discussion of how to interpret the graphics: note the time scale, discuss what the different wave amplitudes mean, and so on. Then cluster into groups of 2-4 students and have each group try to "pick" the first arrivals of [1] the explosion-induced direct wave, [2] the impact-induced direct wave, and [3] the corresponding reflected waves. Depending on the type of students involved (intro non-geologists, intro geology/geophysics, geophysics), the teacher can provide more or less assistance in picking the arrivals of the direct and reflected waves.
Work through the quantitative material on the worksheet. Questions about how to handle uncertainty always occur, and if the students do not admit to having questions about this the teacher should ask them how they handle uncertainties. In a nutshell, the resultant uncertainty associated with the sum or difference in two numbers are the sum of the two uncertainties. For example, (23 Â 2) + (14 Â 1) = 37 Â 3. The resultant uncertainty associated with the product of two numbers can be estimated with the sum of the fractional (or percentage) uncertainties. For example, the percentage uncertainty of 23 Â 2 is (2/23) or 8.7% and the percentage uncertainty of 14 Â 1 is (1/14) or 7.1 %, so (23 Â 2) x (14 Â 1) = 322 Â 51 because (8.7% + 7.1%) = 15.8% and 15.8% of 322 is ~51. For a nice summary of simple uncertainty calculations, refer to http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys273/uncert/uncert.html or http://webpages.ursinus.edu/lriley/ref/unc/unc.html, or the statistics resources on the SERC website.
When the worksheets are completed, recap the experiment and compare the results with a map of crustal thicknesses for North America (e.g., Braile, 1989, Fig. 23B). Finally, it is nice to have the students evaluate the experience as homework.

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Activity involves field data collection with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) unit to identify the location of an underground storage tank (UST). Data collection grid could also be collected and mapped with GPS unit. Actual field data are included with the exercise if field data collection is not an option. The activity gives students hands-on experience with data analysis / interpretation and mapping of subsurface storage tanks that are frequently associated with environmental contamination. This activity uses online and/or real-time data and uses geophysics to solve problems in other fields.

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This activity introduces students to the finite difference solution of the hill-slope diffusion PDE. The students derive partial derivatives from Taylor Series expansions of the 2D topography function z(x,t). After deriving the finite difference solution to this PDE, students implement this solution in MATLAB to model hillslope evolution in time using constant material properties and time steps.

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Bathymetry and topography are used to identify and compare glacial and volcanic features of the Sand Point area, Alaska.

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