Vacation! How Long and How Far? -- A Geological Circuit of National Parks in the Colorado Plateau
This material was originally developed by
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum as part of its collaboration with the SERC Pedagogic Service.
This Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum activity is designed as a Geology of National Parks virtual field trip for a general education course in Florida. Students will calculate a time line and budget to drive a circuit starting and ending at Phoenix AZ and passing through 14 parks in or near the Colorado Plateau. Part of the problem is to figure out how many days would be required, given the amount of time to visit each park, and the speed and distance in the park-to-park drives. Each stop (park) is hyperlinked to geological information about the park.
Learning Goals
- Gain experience in estimating distances and costs of a vacation trip.
- Use a map to estimate distances.
- Determine cell equations to convert units of length and temperature, to calculate travel times from distance and velocity, and to find the percentage increase of park visitations from one year to another.
- Keep track of daily distances, travel times and costs in a spreadsheet and work out the totals for the trip.
- Determine the average speed as a weighted average.
- Find that it is possible to visit many, geologically fascinating, scenic parks in the Colorado Plateau in less than 10 days and a cost less than $1500.
- Learn how to do some basic calculations with Excel.
- Learn to convert between feet and meters and between degrees F and degrees C.
- Get a visual impression of the geologic diversity of the Colorado Plateau.
- From the calculation of driving times, be impressed with the vastness of the Colorado Plateau.
- Appreciate more the natural beauty that can be visited at the National Parks.
Context for Use
I will use this module in an online introductory geology course, "Geology of National Parks" during Spring 2007. I plan for this to be the first of two Quantitative Literacy (QL) modules that will qualify the course for the QL-dimension for certification in the USF General Education curriculum. I will use this module early in the semester. It will be the first hands-on, lab-type activity for the students.
I expect the enrollment to be about 300 students. Few of them will have been to the American Southwest. I hope that the course will motivate many of these Florida students to make the kind of trip that is described in this module and see the rocks in place and in person.
Description and Teaching Materials
SSAC2006.G155.JAH1.1-student (PowerPoint 1.1MB Jul16 07)
The module is a PowerPoint presentation with embedded spreadsheets. If the embedded spreadsheets are not visible, save the PowerPoint file to disk and open it from there.
This PowerPoint file is the student version of the module. An instructor version in which the embedded spreadsheets can be activated (showing the cell equations) is available upon request.
Teaching Notes and Tips
Assessment
The last slide is an end-of-module assignment that can be used to examine student understanding and learning gains.
The instructor's version also includes a pretest that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the module.
References and Resources
Online educational information on geology of the Colorado Plateau
- The National Park Service, Tour of Park Geology -- Colorado Plateau
- U.S. Geological Survey, Geologic Provinces of the United States: Colorado Plateau
- Annabelle Foos (University of Akron), Geology of the Colorado Plateau (pdf)
- Ron Blakey (University of Northern Arizona) home page featuring Colorado Plateau geology
