Teaching Activities

These teaching activities have been submitted by participants in Cutting Edge workshops and all have to do with Structural Geology, Geophysics, and/or Tectonics. You can narrow the view by using the free-text search box as well as by selecting terms from the list on the right. This will allow you to see a particular slice through the collection.


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Results 1 - 10 of 668 matches

Detecting Cascadia's changing shape with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Research-grade Global Positioning Systems (GPS) allow students to deduce that Earth's crust is changing shape in measurable ways. From data gathered by EarthScope's Plate Boundary Observatory, students discover that the Pacific Northwest of the United States and coastal British Columbia — the Cascadia region - are geologically active: tectonic plates move and collide; they shift and buckle; continental crust deforms; regions warp; rocks crumple, bend, and will break.

Subject: Geology: Geoscience, Geology:Tectonics, Geophysics:Geodesy, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards, Natural Hazards:Earthquakes
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Lecture Tutorials for Introductory Physical Geology
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
These activities take place in a lecture setting and require ~5-10 minutes to complete. Students apply lecture topics directly to answer questions, interpret maps and photographs, perform calculations, and plot ...

Subject: Geology: Geoscience:Geology:Tectonics
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Getting started with Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope Consortium
Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry method uses overlapping images to create a 3D point cloud of an object or landscape. It can be applied to everything from fault scarps to landslides to topography. This ...

Subject: Geology: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Converging Tectonic Plates Demonstration
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
During this demo, participants use springs and a map of the Pacific Northwest with GPS vectors to investigate the stresses and surface expression of subduction zones, specifically the Juan de Fuca plate diving beneath the North American plate.

Subject: Geology: Geoscience:Geology:Tectonics, Geophysics:Geodesy, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards, Geography:Geospatial, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards:Earthquakes
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Working with Point Clouds in CloudCompare and Classifying with CANUPO
Sharon Bywater-Reyes, University of Northern Colorado
This exercise will walk you through 1) basic operations and use in CloudCompare, and 2) use of an Open-Source plugin in CloudCompare called CANUPO (http://nicolas.brodu.net/en/recherche/canupo/) that allows for ...

Subject: Geology: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Measuring the Inclination and Declination of the Earth's magnetic field with a smartphone
Avradip Ghosh, University of Houston-University Park
The poles of the Earth's magnetic field are not precisely aligned with the geographic north and south poles and, in fact, vary continuously. This activity introduces to students the Earth's magnetic ...

Subject: Geology: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Magnetism/Paleomag
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Measuring Ground Motion with GPS: How GPS Works
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
With printouts of typical GPS velocity vectors found near different tectonic boundaries and models of a GPS station, demonstrate how GPS work to measure ground motion.GPS velocity vectors point in the direction that a GPS station moves as the ground it is anchored to moves. The length of a velocity vector corresponds to the rate of motion. GPS velocity vectors thus provide useful information for how Earth's crust deforms in different tectonic settings.

Subject: Geology: Geography:Geospatial, Geoscience:Geology:Tectonics, Geophysics:Geodesy
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Students analyze data to study the motion of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. From GPS data, students detect relative motion between the plates in the San Andreas fault zone--with and without earthquakes. To get to that discovery, they use physical models to understand the architecture of GPS, from satellites to sensitive stations on the ground. They learn to interpret time series data collected by stations (in the spreading regime of Iceland), to cast data as horizontal north-south and east-west vectors, and to add those vectors head-to-tail.Students then apply their skills and understanding to data in the context of the strike-slip fault zone of a transform plate boundary. They interpret time series plots from an earthquake in Parkfield, CA to calculate the resulting slip on the fault and (optionally) the earthquake's magnitude.

Subject: Geology: Geoscience, Geology:Tectonics, Geophysics:Geodesy, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards, Natural Hazards:Earthquakes
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Seafloor Spreading: Bathymetry, Anomalies, and Sediments
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students study the bathymetry of the South Atlantic, use magnetic reversals to interpret marine magnetic anomalies, and ...

Subject: Geology: Geoscience:Geology:Tectonics
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Magnetometry at home: a hands-on survey with your smartphone
Charly Bank, University of Toronto
Using a free app downloaded to their smartphone or tablet device students engage in collecting magnetic field data. Students have to design and document a survey, and are encouraged to do simple quality control. ...

Subject: Geology: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Magnetism/Paleomag
Online Field Experience Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching with Online Field Experiences Exemplary collection
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