Tombstone Weathering Lab

Alison M Anders

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes (view details)

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process. This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

Initial Publication Date: May 2, 2008 | Reviewed: November 3, 2013 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

During a field trip to a cemetery students collect data on the weathering of tombstones. They graph the data and make hypotheses about factors other than age that contribute to the different degrees of weathering observed.

Dating and Rates, Weathering/Soils | College Upper (15-16), Graduate/Professional

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Context

Audience

Mixed undergraduate/graduate course in geomorphology with students from geology, natural resources, and geotechnical engineering.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Basic controls on physical and chemical weathering rates.
Ability to recognize sandstone

How the activity is situated in the course

This is the second lab in the semester - very early in the class

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

measuring with calipers
qualitative evaluation of weathering

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

interpretation of results/dealing with scatter in data
generation of a hypothesis
hypothesis testing

Other skills goals for this activity

working as a team
producing a scatter plot

Description of the activity/assignment

Students work in groups in a cemetery to collect a quantitative and a qualitative measure of the extent of weathering of tombstones and their ages. The data are shared between all students, graphed as scatter plots, and the rate of weathering is estimated. Students write about and then discuss the results, the difference between the quantitative and qualitative measures, and speculate on factors in addition to time that may be important for weathering rate. The exercise ends with each students writing a hypothesis about a factor that influences weathering rate and describing a research project that could test that hypothesis. This activity is aimed at developing an understanding of the scatter in "real data", allowing for practice of team work, and hypothesis generation and testing.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Has minimal/no quantitative component