Analyzing the Antarctic Ozone Hole (College Level)
Brian Welch, Saint Olaf College
College-level adaptation of a chapter in the Earth Exploration Toolbook. Examine satellite images of atmospheric ozone in the Southern Hemisphere to study changes in concentration over a time. -

Investigating Earthquakes: GIS Mapping and Analysis (College Level)
Brian Welch, Saint Olaf College
This is a college-level adaptation of a chapter from the Earth Exploration Toolbook. The students download global quake data over a time range and use GIS to interpret the tectonic context. -

The Sleeping Mountain
Rebecca Teed, Wright State University-Main Campus
In this role-playing scenario, students represent townspeople whose lives and livelihoods are endangered by an active volcano which may or may not erupt in the near future. -

Geologic Puzzles: Morrison Formation
Heather Macdonald, College of William and Mary
Images of faulted strata, tilted turbidites, and beach rocks bring the field into the classroom, giving students practice in doing what geoscientists do. These images are examples of geologic puzzles. -

Put Some Blue In Your Green School
Bridget Cameron, Texas Water Development Board; Linda McCall, Texas Water Development Board
Put Some Blue In Your Green School is a service learning project to help schools become efficient water users and to raise awareness about the need for good stewardship practices for water resources within the ...

Use of an inquiry approach for exploring relationships between small stream dynamics, channel geometry, and bedform movement
Kerry Keen, University of Wisconsin-River Falls
This group activity allows students to identify questions in the field on an actual physical system (in this case a small sand and gravel bed stream), then design experiments to answer their own questions. The ...

Understanding Radioactivity in Geology: The Basics of Decay
Christina Stringer—University of South Florida, Tampa FL 33620 This activity was developed for Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum. National Science Foundation, DUE 0442629.
PowerPoint module leading students through creation and manipulation of spreadsheet to forward model an example of exponential decay—the number of remaining unpopped kernels of popcorn in a bag of popping popcorn.

Long-Term Sedimentology Projects Using Local Geological and Environmental Problems
David Franzi, SUNY College at Plattsburgh
Project-based exercises engage students in all aspects of the scientific inquiry, reinforce previously learned concepts and information and provide longer periods of time for students to analyze and synthesize ...

Virtual Field Trip to the Book Cliffs
Ann Holmes, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, The
Problem-based learning techniques have been applied to geological datasets collected and published about the Cretaceous Book Cliffs exposures in Utah.

Digital Sandstone Tutorial
Kitty Milliken, University of Texas at Austin, The
The Tutorial Petrographic Image Atlas is designed to give students more exposure to petrographic features than they can get during organized laboratory periods.

Mineral Classification - What's in a Name?
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus; Dave Mogk, Montana State University-Bozeman
Students derive their own scheme for identifying and naming minerals. Examples include different minerals that have the same crystal forms, and mineral species that occur with numerous forms and varieties to ...

Examination of Igneous Silicates
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus
Students study hand samples of light-colored igneous minerals and related mineral species. They look at some of the same minerals, and others, in thin section.

Crystallization and Melting of Diopside - Anorthite
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus
This short exercise introduces students to the binary phase diagram in the diopside-anorthite system that contains a eutectic invariant point.

Synthetic Alkali Halides
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus
This is a complex experimental investigation of the melting of alkali halides. This project takes more than one class and involves using an X-ray diffractometer.

Reagents, Compositions, Weight Loss
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus
This is a short experimental study of several different reagents and what happens to them when they are heated to 110° and 1200° C.

Determining the Geologic History of Rocks from a Gravel Deposit
Activity designed by Daniel Rolf Tucker, Melinda Riddler Tucker, and William Albert Rieck of the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Starting Point page developed by John McDaris.
Gravels deposited as a result of continental glaciation are used to teach introductory-level earth-science students the application of the scientific method in a cooperative learning mode which utilizes hands-on, ...

Incorporating Information Literacy into Climate Change Teaching
Lura Joseph, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This module contains 10 topics related to finding and evaluating scientific information related to climate change. The skills learned are transferable to any subject area. Each topic includes exercises.

Modeling Glacier Erosion Through Time
Cathy Connor, University of Alaska Southeast
This lab could be adapted for an introductory geology course, upper division geomorphology course, or a climate change course. This activity is borrowed from John Harbor's paper in the Journal of Geoscience ...

Exercises to teach scientific reading comprehension and mineralogic concepts
Kurt Hollocher, Union College (Lincoln, NE)
With a set of tasks and questions as a guide, students read through an article doing the tasks and answering questions as they go. The object is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the science in the paper.

Designing a sedimentary geology course around field-based class projects that yield publishable research
James Ebert, SUNY College at Oneonta
Field-based research projects can be the heart of a course in sedimentary geology. Course content, organization, readings and laboratory experiences are dictated by the nature of the specific project. Less content ...