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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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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This exercise is centered around a suite of rocks from the Sierra Nevada batholith. The activities are designed to give petrology students a capstone experience for the igneous portion of the upper-level Petrology course. Students are given thin sections with hand samples, a map and a table of geochemical analyses (in Excel format) and asked to record hand-sample and thin section observations with the idea that these will be used to understand processes that were active during batholith generation. By the time they encounter this lab, the students have spent at least 7 lab periods looking at a variety of igneous rocks and their textures. Because students are given geochemical analyses, they are also expected to experiment with the use of graphs (e.g., Harker and spider diagrams) to better understand tables of geochemical analyses. The students use observations about rocks and geochemistry to build a coherent story around these rocks; the final product is a short paper in which they use petrographic observations and geochemical diagrams to back up their interpretations.

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This activity is designed to help students recognize the connections among things like rock identification and map reading with the "story" that these things can tell us in terms of geologic history. Students have already learned about using observation to identify rocks and the principles of interpreting geologic cross-sections. The activity gives students practice in rock ID, topo map reading, geologic map reading and the aspects of geologic time. Students work with rock samples and a geologic map of the Grand Canyon to interpret a history for the area.

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An in class demonstration of the vastness of geologic time using a 1000-roll sheet of toilet paper and unrolling it around the room.

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In these homework exercises, students manipulate two- and three- component phase diagrams. At various points during their interpretation of melting or crystallization of a composition, they are asked to visualize/sketch the resulting rock (in thin section) if it were quenched at that point. They are also required to know how to determine how many phases are in equilibrium and the proportions (or percentages) of those phases at any given point during the evolution of a given magma. These exercises require that students understand Gibb's phase rule (and the condensed phase rule), the lever rule and how to determine liquid and solid (both instantaneous and bulk) compositions. In all, there are 4 binary and 6 ternary phase diagram exercises that are each 1-3 pages in length. I have also included an exercise that introduces phase diagrams and the phase rule (developed with Daniel Brabander). We developed these exercises while at Boston University because we felt that conventional exercises taught the students how to manipulate the diagrams but students could not make the connection to what they are seeing in hand sample and in thin section. We have since found that students were better able to apply the concepts of phase diagrams to their hands-on laboratory exercises.

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