What Can (and Cannot) Be Learned from Scientific Drilling Using Examples from Margins Initiatives

Concepts/content to be understood: 1) that scientific drilling has been used to explore the Earth's crust (but not the deep interior); 2) that important information can be learned from scientific drilling; and 3) some specific examples of problems that can be addressed through drilling that will improve students' understanding of subduction processes as well.

This is a lecture segment that could be introduced to an introductory geoscience class to help explain and demonstrate what can and cannot be found out by scientific drilling. It should follow lectures on rocks, minerals, Earth's layers and simple plate tectonics, and be incorporated into a discussion of how we know what the Earth's interior is like. The lesson uses two examples from Margins Initiatives as problems that can be addressed successfully using scientific drilling.
Alternatively, the segment could be used as a review for an upper level class, and to launch more quantitative lessons in petrology, stratigraphy, or geophysics using Margins data.

Teaching materials are online resources that are embedded in the powerpoint file. Lecture segment/review ( 4MB Jun14 07)

These are embedded in the powerpoint.