M & M Decay
Rebecca Teed, Wright State University-Main Campus
This is a simulation of radioactive decay which illustrates what a half-life is and explains some of the challenges involved with radiometric dating. Pennies or other cheap coins can be substituted for M&Ms if ...

The Evolution of Earth through Time
Phil Stokes, The University of Arizona
This activity is designed for large freshman courses (>200 students) and is used in-class. The activity requires a short (15 minute) overview of Earth history before students have the opportunity to work through ...

Depositional Environments and Geologic History Labs
Maria Waller, Wellesley College; Kathy Gilbert, Wellesley College
This is a pair of labs that incrementally prepare students to interpret the geologic history of a rock sequence. The first lab introduces students to depositional environments and fossils. The second lab presents a ...

Biozones, stratigraphic log correlation, and corresponding interpretation of paleoenvironments.
Francis Jones, University of British Columbia
This exercise is a guided opportunity for any number of students (even hundreds) to start using recently learned, lower-level knowledge about stratigraphy and biostratigraphy in an integrative, interpretation ...

Teaching radioactive decay & radiometric dating: an analog activity based on fluid dynamics
Erika Grundstrom, Vanderbilt University
Radiometric dating/geochronology is a difficult concept for students. Using the (rather messy) medium of shampoo, students watch it flow through holes of different sizes, determine the exponential decay equation, ...

Crater Counting Lab exercise
Kevin Mullins, Coconino County Community College
This lab is designed to teach students how we can estimate the age of other planetary surfaces by counting and size-binning impact craters. It also illustrates some examples of how erosional or deopositional ...

The Cosmic Calendar
Erika Grundstrom, Vanderbilt University
In this activity, one takes ALL of time, from the beginning of time (i.e., the Big Bang) all the way up to today, but one compresses it into one year. One can do this for all levels of students depending on how ...

Personal Timeline
Rebecca Teed, Wright State University-Main Campus
Students start this worksheet by listing the most important events in their own lives, plotting them on a timeline, and then doing the same with Earth history events. Usually, their personal timelines will resemble ...

Relative Age Correlation
Gwen Daley, Winthrop University
Students learn to apply basic correlation principles to geologic cross-sections.

Radiocarbon dating project
Mark Schmitz, Boise State University
This is an example of an activity used in a Quaternary Geochronology course, in which a small group of students (3-4) is tasked with transforming a set of activity measurements into radiocarbon ages and calibrated ...