Slicing Fruit
Tom Hickson (University of St. Thomas) and Ilyse Resnick (Temple University)
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Collection
Resources in this top level collection a) must have scored Exemplary or Very Good in all five review categories, and must also rate as "Exemplary" in at least three of the five categories. The five categories included in the peer review process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
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For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
- First Publication: May 19, 2015
- Reviewed: July 6, 2017 -- Reviewed by the On the Cutting Edge Activity Review Process
Summary
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Bowl of fruit. Photo by Carol Ormand.
![[creative commons]](/images/creativecommons_16.png)
Provenance: Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
In this exercise, students identify and draw slices through fruit, beginning with single pieces of fruit and working up to arrangements of multiple pieces of fruit. This practice at sketching slices through familiar objects is preparation for sketching slices through geological features.
Topics
Geology Grade Level
College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)
Readiness for Online Use
Online Ready 
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Learning Goals
After successfully completing this exercise, students will be able to sketch slices through fruit at a variety of angles. It is my hope that they will be able to transfer that ability to thinking about slices through geologic features as well.
Context for Use
This exercise is designed to be used early on in a course that requires a lot of mental slicing (imagining cross-sections through sedimentary deposits or deformed rocks, for example). I use it as a prelude to an exercise on mentally slicing through sediment and rocks, and use the analogy that a pebble conglomerate is similar in some ways to a fruit salad. While this exercise is likely to be fairly easy for most students, it will allow you to quickly see whether you have any students who struggle with visual penetrative thinking ("mental slicing").
Description and Teaching Materials
Students work through a series of exercises, from multiple choice questions about slices through individual pieces of fruit to free sketching of cross-sections through arrangements of fruit still lifes.
Fruit slicing exercise (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 4.2MB May19 15)
Teaching Notes and Tips
This exercise was developed as part of a set of exercises to support 3D visualization skills. These exercises had an intended order. Instructors can pick and choose the exercises, but the order we intended was as follows:
- Introduction to 3D sketching
- Sketching block diagrams
- Sketching 3D Ripples and Dunes
- Slicing cylinders
- Slicing channels
- Slicing fruit
- Slicing rocks
- Slicing fossils
Assessment
I look over student sketches to see how well they are able to sketch the cross sections.
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