Deciphering Mineral Structure Diagrams part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Students compare mineral structures shown in ball-and-stick, space filling, and polyhedral diagrams.

Understanding Crystal Symmetry via Gestures part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Students use a small mirror to explore the meaning of mirror symmetry, and then use their hands to gesture mirror planes for a group of familiar objects. They also explore the rotational symmetry of a group of familiar objects, and then use their hands to gesture the rotational axes and rotation. Finally, they use gestures to show mirror and rotational symmetry of wooden crystal models.

Identifying Symmetry in 2-D Drawings part of Activities
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus
These three activities are problem sets that make students think about symmetry in 2-D. They all involve identifying symmetry from drawings. I purposely omitted jargony words/phrases such as lattice, unit cell, ...

Mineral Identification via Remote SEM Analysis part of Activities
Rosemary Hickey-Vargas, Florida International University; Sven Holbik, Florida International University; Sven Holbik and Rosemary Hickey-Vargas, Florida International University
This lab uses the remote capabilities of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) available through the Florida Center for Analytical Electron Microscopy (FCAEM; ...

Research Experiences in a Mineralogy Class part of Undergraduate Research:Case Studies
Dave Mogk, Montana State University Summary One of the goals of my Mineralogy class is to demonstrate how the principles and content covered in class can be applied to questions of geologic interest or that have ...

Extending Mineralogy by Electron Microprobe Analysis part of Petrology:Teaching Examples
John Goodge, University of Minnesota-Duluth
This lab is designed to be a highly interactive lab session for a petrology course, where instructors provide a minimal level of essential background and then the entire group works together to explore mineral ...

Weathering of Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary Rocks in a Semi-Arid Climate - An Engineering Application of Petrology part of Petrology:Teaching Examples
Wendy Harrison, National Science Foundation; Ric Wendlandt, Colorado School of Mines
Students examine soils developed on igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks near Denver, Colorado. The 2-week exercise includes sample collection, description, and preparation, determining clay mineralogy by ...

Using Cooperative Learning to Teach Mineralogy (and Other Courses Too!) part of Activities
LeeAnn Srogi, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
This chapter is concerned primarily with how the content of a mineralogy course can be organized so that the students are more active and conscientious learners. This chapter is divided into three sections: Section ...

Calculating Compositional Variation and Common Substitutions for Igneous and Metamorphic Minerals part of Petrology:Teaching Examples
Dave Mogk, Montana State University-Bozeman
This problem set uses Excel spreadsheets to calculate mineral formulae from analytical data (typically from the electron microprobe) using a variety of formulations that assume numerous variations of crystal ...

The Nature of Science and Scientific Fraud part of GeoEthics:Activities
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota Summary There are two parts to this exercise but they are stand-alone if desired. The first part deals with the nature of science: what is science, what does it involve, ...

Observational Skills in a Simple Crystal Growing Experiment part of Geoscience in Two-year Colleges:Activities
Richard Gottfried, Frederick Community College
Students grow crystals and identify the crystal system by observing their basic geometric form. Students all research crytallization processes.

Introduction to Mineral Identification part of Geoscience in Two-year Colleges:Activities
Suki Smaglik, Laramie County Community College
The exercise uses an inquiry-based approached to overcome the fear of tackling mineral identification. Few instructions are given and students discover for themselves how to approach identification.

Mineral Properties -- Learning through Experience part of Geoscience in Two-year Colleges:Activities
Katryn Wiese, City College of San Francisco
Students are each given a mineral and asked to locate all other students in the room with the same mineral (knowing there are a total of 5 different minerals). Once groups form, they need to decide what characteristics are similar for all their samples and ultimately report out to the whole class on their observations.

Determining Mantle Temperature and Composition from Discontinuities part of Deep Earth:Activities
Anna Courtier, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This pair of activities uses observations of mantle discontinuity structure to examine mantle heterogeneity and differences in the depth extent of melt sources for ridges and "hotspots." The first ...

Wave Interference part of Deep Earth:Activities
Glenn Richard, SUNY at Stony Brook
This activity engages students in the exploration of interference between sinusoidal wave forms. They use an interactive applet to manipulate the phase, wavelength, amplitude, and phase velocity of two waveforms ...