Understanding the Deep Earth

Online Workshop

Apologies for the late start, but this is the space to interact about
[1] teaching deep-Earth material in gen-ed/intro geoscience courses,
[2] using the exploration of the deep Earth as a way to illustrate the process of scientific inquiry, and
[3] bringing the excitement and insights about deep-earth processes to the general public.

Let the chat begin!
--Vince

Hello everyone..
Keeping in mind gen ed students, hooks, visuals and hands on material for these folks.. I am putting together a crossword puzzle to help with vocabulary ( most of my students are ESL as well as these are new terms for most of my other students).. I also had this idea of introducing p-waves by using the old spirograph.. remember that toy as a kid? Also I like the use of before and after drawings of students visualization of what THEY think the interior of the earth is.. My lesson will be short activites within a 1 hr 20 minute talk on Deep Earth. I think I am still in the brainstorm/idea mode here.. ANy thoughts or suggestions, Please...

When I introduce P-waves and S-waves, and refer to their different velocities, I like to draw the analogy to lightning and thunder. The velocity of sound through air is something like 1100 feet per second. When you see a lightning flash and it is immediately followed by the thunder crash, you intuitively know that the lightning hit nearby. The light travels from the lightning bolt to you essentially instantaneously, so the time difference between when you see the flash and hear the thunder can be used to tell the distance to the lightning strike. The beauty of this analogy is that many/most people know about using this travel-time difference to infer distance, so all a teacher need do is remind students of what they already know and extend the knowledge to include travel-time differences between P and S waves.