Introduction to urban watershed geochemistry part of Hydrogeology:Hydrogeology, Soils, Geochemistry 2013:Activities
Vijay Vulava, College of Charleston
The main goal of this multi-part field and lab exercise is to introduce students to practical aspects of soil and water geochemistry. Some of the analyses for this lab are conducted in the field using field ...

Stable Isotopes and M&Ms part of Oceanography:Activities
Roman de Jesus, Fullerton College
Students are often confused by the concepts of stable isotope signatures and conventional notation. This activity is designed to introduce students to the del notation (isotopic signature), fractionation, and end ...

Sediments and the Global Carbon Cycle part of Sedimentary Geology:Activities
Lonnie Leithold, North Carolina State University
This is a series of exercises designed to introduce undergraduate students to the role of sediments and sedimentary rocks in the global carbon cycle and the use of stable carbon isotopes to reconstruct ancient ...

Vostok Ice Core: Excel (Mac or PC) part of Starting Point-Teaching Entry Level Geoscience:Mathematical and Statistical Models:Mathematical and Statistical Models Examples
Professor Stephanie Pfirman, Barnard College. Based on data of J. Chapellaz, Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de l'Environment, Grenoble. Archived at: Lamont-Dohert Earth Observatory ( This site may be offline. ) . Starting Point page organized by R.M. MacKay.
Students use Excel to graph and analyze Vostok ice core data (160,000 years of Ice core data from Vostok Station). Data includes ice age, ice depth, carbon dioxide, methane, dust, and deuterium isotope relative ...

What Goes into Making Volcanic Arc Magmas, and How Do We Know It? part of MARGINS Data in the Classroom:MARGINS Mini-Lessons
Jeff Ryan, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg
This activity is a directed reading exercise focused on papers that have been key to our understanding of the major source contributors to subduction zone volcanic rocks.

Calculating Rb-Sr Isochrons part of Petrology:Teaching Examples
Andy Barth, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis
This is a spreadsheet that I use in petrology to walk students through calculating Rb-Sr isochrons and talking about isotope heterogeneity and sampling at various scales. The example exercise is the Tuolumne ...

Half Life Model part of Starting Point-Teaching Entry Level Geoscience:Interactive Lecture Demonstrations:Examples
David N. Steer (steer@uakron.edu)and Kyle Gray (krg10@uakron.edu), University of Akron This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. GEO-0506518.
While working in groups to facilitate peer tutoring, students manipulate a hands-on, physical model to better comprehend the nature of half life. Students use the model to simulate the decay of radionuclides. The ...

Geothermal Gradients part of Petrology:Teaching Examples
Cameron Davidson, Carleton College
In this problem set the students use two different equations to calculate a conductive geothermal gradient using a spreadsheet program like Excel. Once they have the geothermal gradient plotted, they are asked to ...

Learning Thermodynamics and Using Spreadsheets part of Petrology:Teaching Examples
Sumit Chakraborty and Somnath Dasgupta
These files contain a set of three Excel files to balance mineral reactions, to explore variation of thermodynamic properties as a function of P, T and composition and to explore stability of different mineral ...

Teaching Stable Isotope Geochemistry in an Undergraduate Petrology or Geochemistry Course part of Petrology:Teaching Examples
Steve Dunn
This assignment includes three reading assignments for students that (1) introduce the basics of stable isotope geochemistry, (2) explain carbon and oxygen isotopic shifts that result from volatilization and/or ...