Slicing Cylinders part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students identify and draw slices through cylinders and partial cylinders, and use gestures to visualize slicing planes. This practice with visualizing slices through idealized geometric shapes is preparation for visualizing slices through geological features.

Slicing Fruit part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students identify and draw slices through fruit, as practice for drawing slices through more complex features.

Slices Through 3D Objects part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students identify and draw slices through an ice cream cone, a pyramid, and a beverage six-pack.

Spatial Thinking Assessment Instruments part of Spatial Thinking Workbook
Over the course of this project, we developed some instruments for assessing spatial thinking skills. Two of them have been adapted by instructors and researchers across the US. Both are multiple-choice ...

Sketching Block Diagrams part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students watch a video of the instructor sketching two geologic block diagrams (of flat stratigraphy and of an upright anticline), then practice sketching additional geologic block diagrams.

Introduction to 3D Sketching part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
This activity provides an introduction to 3D sketching. Students sketch a cube, boxes, and cylinders. They watch a video about how to sketch boxes and cylinders, and then sketch a few more.

Understanding Polyhedral Diagrams part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students identify individual polyhedra in a variety of diagrams and answer questions about shared oxygens in diagrams of common silicate structures.

Fault Separation part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students use gestures to explore the relationship between fault slip direction and fault separation by varying the geometry of faulted layers and the slip direction.

Gestures for Miller Indices part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students use one hand to gesture crystallographic axes and the other hand to represent planes designated by Miller Indices.

Slicing Rocks part of Spatial Thinking Workbook:Teaching Activities
Students examine images of a bowl of rocks, then several rock piles, then outcrops of conglomerate and breccia. They sketch slices through the bowl of rocks, match photos of rock piles to sketches of slices through those piles, and then apply what they've learned to describe the conglomerate and breccia.