Virtual Lab: "Big Nine" Silicates in Thin Section
Catherine Macris, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis
This virtual lab activity uses Virtual Microscope to help students create their own ranked lists of diagnostic properties for the "Big Nine" silicate minerals/groups, which includes quartz, muscovite, ...

Did Early Farmers Alter Climate?
Sue Swanson, Beloit College
The overarching goal of this exercise is for students to explore the early anthropogenic hypothesis, which claims that early agriculture had a substantial impact on greenhouse gases and global climate thousands of ...

Field saturated hydraulic conductivity
James MacDonald, Florida Gulf Coast University
This is a field-based lab that allows students to measure field saturated hydraulic conductivity of the unsaturated soils. This is done by keeping a constant head in an augured hole and measuring the time required ...

Linking Earthquakes and Geologic Time by Paleoseismology
Martin Farley, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
In teaching general education Earth Science lecture, to make connections between separate topics I have created a paleoseismology activity that requires students to apply principles of relative geologic time to the ...

Magma Degassing and Eruption Style 2
Jessica Larsen, University of Alaska Fairbanks
This activity provides an opportunity for students to work with real data collected from samples from the 2008 eruption of Okmok volcano, Alaska. The homework activity explores how magma gas content can be ...

Fossil Identification
Connie Soja, Colgate University, csoja@colgate.edu
This activity asks students to identify examples of types of fossils amongst the exhibits at the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York. Students will build on their ...

Introduction to the Trilobites: Morphology, Macroevolution and More
Michelle Casey, University of Kansas Main Campus
The learning goals for this lab are the following: 1) to familiarize students with the anatomy and terminology relating to trilobites; 2) to give students experience identifying morphologic structures on real ...

Using Google Earth to measure seacliff erosion rates
Alfred Hochstaedter, Monterey Peninsula College
This lab uses Google Earth to measure the rate of seacliff retreat. It touches upon coastal processes, natural hazards, and coastal management issues. The central focus of the lab is in the Monterey Bay area.

Biostratigraphy for fun and profit
David Watkins, University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Students use the evolutionary distribution of oceanic phytoplankton fossils to date the age of pelagic and hemipelagic sedimentary rocks. They correlate this section to another as an exercise in oil prospecting.

Ionic sizes and crystal structures (Pauling's rule #1)
Susannah Dorfman, Michigan State University
Students derive the radius ratio rule of ionic coordination (Pauling's 1st rule) empirically using balls of different sizes followed by a mathematical derivation.