Tracking Sea Level and Paleoenvironments with Fossils part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Pete Berquist, Virginia Peninsula Community College
Students use the Paleobiology Database Navigator to examine changes in sea level in southeastern North America throughout the Cretaceous, Paleogene, and Neogene Periods. They will plot the change in distribution of ...

Feldspar Minerals and Triangle Diagrams part of Introductory Courses:Activities
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 learn how to read a triangle or ternary diagram. They determine physical properties of feldspars and interpret two ...

Igneous Rocks and Triangle Diagrams part of Introductory Courses:Activities
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 observe igneous rock compositions and plot them on triangle diagrams, normalize rock compositions using a ...

Geological Mapping of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Joseph Meert, University of Florida
This is useful as a first field mapping exercise (virtual) in a traditional capstone field camp course. Students will map flat-lying, but faulted Mesozoic strata near Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Skills required in ...

Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley E 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.

Mechanisms of Evolution part of Sedimentary Geology:Sedimentology, Geomorphology, and Paleontology 2014:Activities
Rene Shroat-Lewis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
This exercise uses simple experiments to examine the process of natural selection, which is driven by variation in genetic traits within a population, the potential for offspring to inherit traits from their ...

Relative Dating with Art part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Jennifer Cholnoky, Skidmore College
This activity asks students to make observations of an artwork and to deduce the sequence of events or processes that occurred during the creation of the piece.

Virtual field trip to Giant's Causeway, Ireland part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Jill Schneiderman, Vassar College
This online assignment takes the students on a virtual field trip to Giant's Causeway in northern Ireland. It begins with a brief video of the geological site, includes some questions relevant to the history ...

Geology of the Grand Canyon part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Students analyze topographic and geologic maps, through a set of guiding questions, to decipher the geologic history recorded in the rocks of the Grand Canyon.

Chemistry of Cave Formation part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Students investigate what happens to calcium carbonate in an aqueous solution when the pH of the water changes.