This month, July 2012, I'm hosting The Accretionary Wedge, and the topic that I've chosen is "Geoscience & Technology". There is no question that technology has played an enormous role in the furthering of geoscience, and I'd like to assemble a series of posts from the geoblogosphere that describes the relationship. So, fellow geobloggers, how do you perceive technology impacting the work you do?
What to blog about?
I can think of a number of different directions that this topic can go. For example, if you're a geophysicist, you might discuss how some of the equipment you use works. If you're a geochemist, maybe you would like to explain how your fancy new ICP-MS measures those super cool isotope ratios. Maybe you'd like to post about GIS, GPS, Google Earth, or mobile technology. An epic post on how GPS receivers use billion dollar satellites to determine spatial location would be a welcome addition. Someone could use this opportunity to give some press to their favorite istuffs or Android apps. Perhaps you could highlight how a technological development in the past lead to new data that were not previously possible. Maybe someone will go uber-meta and post about the technology of social media and it's importance to the future of geoscience (any takers?). Whatever it is, feel free to discuss how you see technology making an impact on geoscience. Let's put together a great collection of posts!
How this works (mainly for new folks!):
The Accretionary Wedge is a geology blog carnival; in other words, about once a month a topic is sent out (like this post) and geobloggers write up their contribution to the topic at hand on their blogs. Anyone in geoscience is welcome to participate. Especially if you've never contributed before to geoscience blogging, don't be afraid to dip in a toe and test out the waters. You're welcome to join and add your voice to this conversation. The deadline for this event is the end of the month, July 31, 2012. Before that deadline, write up your post & publish it on your blog - start up a blog if necessary! :-). I recommend including references & links to The Accretionary Wedge blog and this Call for Posts. Not sure how your post will fit in? It's called the "Accretionary Wedge" for a reason! All rock types are allowed in this rock garden. Sometime in August, I'll read through all of the posts (that I know about!), write up a summary, and post it here on my blog. In other words, I need to know about your post, so please leave a link to your post in the comments below. You can also tag me in a post on Google+ or mention me in a tweet (@EarthlikePlanet) if you post a link to your contribution on those social networks (but the more that post links here, the easier it will be on me to corral them all). Let's go with hashtag #AW48. As to the deadline: if I haven't posted the summary blog post yet, then you might consider the deadline as more of a "guideline". Questions?
Geoscience news & issues on planet Earth, as well as anything else geological I feel like yabbering about.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
A slight cringe at a Yellowstone National Park sign
I've been back from my month long trip to South Dakota & surrounding areas for a couple of weeks now. There's lots of great geology to talk about, so a lot more will come as I get around to it. But for now, just a post about a sign at Yellowstone that reads:
EEeeeeeessssshh!! If you zoom in on that photo above, you might be able to make out the text under the central picture of Castle geyser. As to the science on the sign, the basic idea that hydrothermal fluids dissolve & reprecipitate silica is fine, and this sign probably communicates correct information to the reader for the most part. However, it perpetuates a misconception in the understanding of what a mineral is. "Silica", "geyserite", and "sinter" are NOT minerals. At least, not in the geologic sense, and since this sign is communicated geoscience information, it ought to use geologic terms correctly.
Silica is a chemical compound, with the formula SiO2. All minerals are chemical compounds, but chemical compounds are not necessarily minerals. For one thing, minerals have to be solid. So if silica is dissolved in water, it's not a solid, it's now a component of a liquid. Using the term "mineral" in this fashion is a bit like the way the term is often used in nutrition, where various elements like calcium & iron are often referred to as "minerals". They are sometimes referred to as "mineral nutrients" or "dietary minerals", but neither of these terms are very satisfying either. I'm not sure why the term mineral ever got used in this fashion, since none of the "minerals" referred to in nutrition are minerals, they are simply elements. But again, this sign is attempting to communicate geoscience, and in geoscience if something is dissolved in a liquid, it is most definitely not a mineral.
Now suppose our silica is in a solid form, does that make it a mineral? Not necessarily. Several minerals are made of silica (quartz & its many polymorphs), but silica itself is not a mineral, it is a chemical compound. The reason silica is not a mineral is because minerals are defined not only by their chemical composition but also by their atomic structure. Quartz & all those other silica polymorphs each have a distinct atomic structure. Silica can also form solid materials that are not minerals, such as opal. Opal is a solid that does not have a crystalline atomic structure. Glass is another solid material that also does not have a crystalline atomic structure. A crystalline atomic structure means that the atoms are all lined up and bonded together in an orderly fashion that repeats itself in three dimensions thousands and millions and billions of times, depending on the size of the grain. Non-crystalline solids are solids where the atoms are a bit more jumbled up & irregular. So minerals are defined by their chemical composition AND their atomic structure. Silica is a more general term that only means chemical composition, but doesn't specify the atomic structure.
Geyserite is also not a mineral. "Geyserite" is something of a generic term referring to the solid silica that is deposited around geysers. So this is at least solid, but it still isn't a mineral. Most of geyserite is the material known as opal, and as I already explained above, opal is not a mineral because it does not have a crystalline structure at the atomic level.
Sinter is another term that really refers to the porous nature of the geyserite, so this is a term that's really about the physical attribute of the aggregation of the various grains of opal. So really, this is a rock term.
So what is a mineral? That I'll save for another post.
But why write this post? Who cares? I teach a course in minerals to undergraduate geology majors. One of the most important concepts of the course is "what is a mineral?" and what is not. Definitions, especially in science, are extremely important. A geologist's understanding of the term "mineral" can't be gray & fuzzy; it needs to be precise & accurate. Many geology majors grow up with an interest in natural phenomena & are likely to see signs like this one at Yellowstone, and they get these confused definitions in their heads. In education, misconceptions (things we think we know but are actually wrong) are really, really hard to get out & get corrected.
On the first day of my mineralogy class, I ask my students to simply list the name of every mineral they can think of. When they took their introductory geology course, they learned about 20 or so minerals, so this exercise is intended to require them to recall that information. But the answers given often include things that are not minerals. Answers like "quartz, feldspar, granite, calcium" sometimes show up. The first two are fine minerals, but #3 is a rock and #4 is an element and neither of them are minerals. This shows that the students don't have a clear & precise grasp of what a mineral even is or is not. In my experience, this is pretty typical for students at this stage of learning; hopefully at the end of the course they've got the concept mastered!
But beyond the students in a mineralogy course, confusion about science abounds in our society. A basic knowledge of the differences between minerals, elements, & chemical compounds is junior high level science. So I cringe when these differences are misrepresented on a sign in a national park that's intended to communicate scientific information to the public. The problem basically boils down to this: there's a precise, careful definition of the term that's used by those who know, and there's the loose, flimsy definition of the term that's used more in the general public. A sign communicating geoscience to the public I think ought to be a bit better.
"Deep within the Earth, heated water dissolves and then transports silica, the same mineral found in sand and glass, to the surface. During geyser eruptions, silica is deposited around narrow 'vents' or openings. Over time this mineral, called geyserite or sinter, forms mounds of varying sizes and shapes."
 |
| The sign that's wrong about minerals. |
Silica is a chemical compound, with the formula SiO2. All minerals are chemical compounds, but chemical compounds are not necessarily minerals. For one thing, minerals have to be solid. So if silica is dissolved in water, it's not a solid, it's now a component of a liquid. Using the term "mineral" in this fashion is a bit like the way the term is often used in nutrition, where various elements like calcium & iron are often referred to as "minerals". They are sometimes referred to as "mineral nutrients" or "dietary minerals", but neither of these terms are very satisfying either. I'm not sure why the term mineral ever got used in this fashion, since none of the "minerals" referred to in nutrition are minerals, they are simply elements. But again, this sign is attempting to communicate geoscience, and in geoscience if something is dissolved in a liquid, it is most definitely not a mineral.
Now suppose our silica is in a solid form, does that make it a mineral? Not necessarily. Several minerals are made of silica (quartz & its many polymorphs), but silica itself is not a mineral, it is a chemical compound. The reason silica is not a mineral is because minerals are defined not only by their chemical composition but also by their atomic structure. Quartz & all those other silica polymorphs each have a distinct atomic structure. Silica can also form solid materials that are not minerals, such as opal. Opal is a solid that does not have a crystalline atomic structure. Glass is another solid material that also does not have a crystalline atomic structure. A crystalline atomic structure means that the atoms are all lined up and bonded together in an orderly fashion that repeats itself in three dimensions thousands and millions and billions of times, depending on the size of the grain. Non-crystalline solids are solids where the atoms are a bit more jumbled up & irregular. So minerals are defined by their chemical composition AND their atomic structure. Silica is a more general term that only means chemical composition, but doesn't specify the atomic structure.
Geyserite is also not a mineral. "Geyserite" is something of a generic term referring to the solid silica that is deposited around geysers. So this is at least solid, but it still isn't a mineral. Most of geyserite is the material known as opal, and as I already explained above, opal is not a mineral because it does not have a crystalline structure at the atomic level.
Sinter is another term that really refers to the porous nature of the geyserite, so this is a term that's really about the physical attribute of the aggregation of the various grains of opal. So really, this is a rock term.
So what is a mineral? That I'll save for another post.
But why write this post? Who cares? I teach a course in minerals to undergraduate geology majors. One of the most important concepts of the course is "what is a mineral?" and what is not. Definitions, especially in science, are extremely important. A geologist's understanding of the term "mineral" can't be gray & fuzzy; it needs to be precise & accurate. Many geology majors grow up with an interest in natural phenomena & are likely to see signs like this one at Yellowstone, and they get these confused definitions in their heads. In education, misconceptions (things we think we know but are actually wrong) are really, really hard to get out & get corrected.
On the first day of my mineralogy class, I ask my students to simply list the name of every mineral they can think of. When they took their introductory geology course, they learned about 20 or so minerals, so this exercise is intended to require them to recall that information. But the answers given often include things that are not minerals. Answers like "quartz, feldspar, granite, calcium" sometimes show up. The first two are fine minerals, but #3 is a rock and #4 is an element and neither of them are minerals. This shows that the students don't have a clear & precise grasp of what a mineral even is or is not. In my experience, this is pretty typical for students at this stage of learning; hopefully at the end of the course they've got the concept mastered!
But beyond the students in a mineralogy course, confusion about science abounds in our society. A basic knowledge of the differences between minerals, elements, & chemical compounds is junior high level science. So I cringe when these differences are misrepresented on a sign in a national park that's intended to communicate scientific information to the public. The problem basically boils down to this: there's a precise, careful definition of the term that's used by those who know, and there's the loose, flimsy definition of the term that's used more in the general public. A sign communicating geoscience to the public I think ought to be a bit better.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
EarthCache
I've long been a fan of one of the lesser known types of geocaching, the EarthCache. Unlike their more well known counterparts, there is no container of tupperware hiding in the woods. Instead, the cacher must visit a location for its geological significance and answer a few questions in order to log the cache as a find. I've logged a bunch of them and set up three of them myself at some of my favorite geological spots. I guess they bring together two things I'm passionate about: Earth science and education.
Last week I returned home from being gone for a month, where I was teaching geology field camp for Wheaton College at their science station in the Black Hills of South Dakota. While out there, I was able to find several EarthCaches. So far I've only logged a few of them, and I've got about a dozen or so more to go. It can take a bit of effort to finish them all up, which is why a couple of other geocachers I know have said they hardly ever log them. But I find them much more rewarding than the regular geocache.
I found two locations while out there that will make for excellent EarthCaches. I don't want to give too much of them away before I submit them, but one is an unconformity in the Black Hills and the other is a fault in the Bighorns. More to come maybe after I get them submitted.
Last week I returned home from being gone for a month, where I was teaching geology field camp for Wheaton College at their science station in the Black Hills of South Dakota. While out there, I was able to find several EarthCaches. So far I've only logged a few of them, and I've got about a dozen or so more to go. It can take a bit of effort to finish them all up, which is why a couple of other geocachers I know have said they hardly ever log them. But I find them much more rewarding than the regular geocache.
I found two locations while out there that will make for excellent EarthCaches. I don't want to give too much of them away before I submit them, but one is an unconformity in the Black Hills and the other is a fault in the Bighorns. More to come maybe after I get them submitted.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Success with Authorship in Google Search Results
Over on Google+, I have linked to articles on Google Authorship a couple of times, but the time has come for a full blog post. This new feature, announced last year, is I think going to be one of the biggest changes to the internet, in that it will change the way people expect to search for content.
So what is it? When you run a Google search, you expect to see a series of links to content that is relevant to your search. Google's Authorship initiative is their attempt to connect content on the internet to the creators of that content. What it looks like is that underneath a link in search results, the picture & name of the content creator will show up. The identity shown for the author is from the author's profile on Google+. In other words, a Google search returns not only the links to content you are looking for, but it connects to those links a direct way to the person who wrote the content.
I think it is incredibly valuable to content creators to get in on this early, and start connecting your Google+ profile to the content that you create on the internet. Blogs are an obvious starting point. On the user/content creator end, you have to link to the sites you write in your G+ profile by inserting links into your "Contributor To" section. On the other side of the coin, websites that host your content must do the necessary work to make sure your content is connected back to your G+ profile. When you have control of both, the connection is fairly easy to make. There are a number of articles on this topic out there with specifics on how to set this up, and this one is the best I've seen.
I've connected the content I write for this blog to my profile as well as the content I write for our department blog. It took a little while to start seeing changes in search results, but as of a couple of days ago I'm now seeing my author profile under the links to these two sites when they show up in search results. Here's an example of how the links to a couple of fairly recent posts I made on this blog now show up in search results:
I really hope this doesn't come across as egotistical! Rather, imagine what this can do for science - if search results for science content were connected to the creators of that content. What if author profiles would come connected with search results in Google Scholar. Search results could not only turn up science links, but connections to the people who created that content. The problem currently is that many sites don't have the proper set up to connect content to a G+ profile. I would love to see abstracts from professional meetings, such as the Geological Society of America, to be able to be linked in this fashion, as well as full journal articles. This could be tremendous for science & science education. Why? Because the connection becomes more personal, more human.
If you're interested & want to see what more results for my stuff looks like, type in "Appalachian Field Trip" into a Google Search. Since Google search is user specific, you may need to force Google search to find my stuff on this topic by adding "Carrigan" to the search terms.
Well, what do you think? Could this be good for science? Going to set yours up now? :-) I'd love to hear about others' success stories!
So what is it? When you run a Google search, you expect to see a series of links to content that is relevant to your search. Google's Authorship initiative is their attempt to connect content on the internet to the creators of that content. What it looks like is that underneath a link in search results, the picture & name of the content creator will show up. The identity shown for the author is from the author's profile on Google+. In other words, a Google search returns not only the links to content you are looking for, but it connects to those links a direct way to the person who wrote the content.
I think it is incredibly valuable to content creators to get in on this early, and start connecting your Google+ profile to the content that you create on the internet. Blogs are an obvious starting point. On the user/content creator end, you have to link to the sites you write in your G+ profile by inserting links into your "Contributor To" section. On the other side of the coin, websites that host your content must do the necessary work to make sure your content is connected back to your G+ profile. When you have control of both, the connection is fairly easy to make. There are a number of articles on this topic out there with specifics on how to set this up, and this one is the best I've seen.
I've connected the content I write for this blog to my profile as well as the content I write for our department blog. It took a little while to start seeing changes in search results, but as of a couple of days ago I'm now seeing my author profile under the links to these two sites when they show up in search results. Here's an example of how the links to a couple of fairly recent posts I made on this blog now show up in search results:
I really hope this doesn't come across as egotistical! Rather, imagine what this can do for science - if search results for science content were connected to the creators of that content. What if author profiles would come connected with search results in Google Scholar. Search results could not only turn up science links, but connections to the people who created that content. The problem currently is that many sites don't have the proper set up to connect content to a G+ profile. I would love to see abstracts from professional meetings, such as the Geological Society of America, to be able to be linked in this fashion, as well as full journal articles. This could be tremendous for science & science education. Why? Because the connection becomes more personal, more human.
If you're interested & want to see what more results for my stuff looks like, type in "Appalachian Field Trip" into a Google Search. Since Google search is user specific, you may need to force Google search to find my stuff on this topic by adding "Carrigan" to the search terms.
Well, what do you think? Could this be good for science? Going to set yours up now? :-) I'd love to hear about others' success stories!
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Mt. LeConte Hike & EveryTrail.com Website
Last summer, June 2011, I climbed Mt. LeConte with my two brothers-in-law. We were on our annual big family vacation, that year in Gatlinburg, TN. It was something I had wanted to do for a while. I love mountains (always have as long as I can remember) but I've never climbed very many of them. So at some point, I decided this trip was the one to register this peak.
Mt. LeConte (~6600') is one of the highest peaks in Great Smoky Mtn. Natl. Park, and it is the tallest in eastern TN from immediate base to top.
We decided to go big - there are several trails one can take to get to the top, and we picked one of the longer routes. One of the longer trails takes you past Rainbow Falls, which is the highest single drop waterfall in the park, and that sounded like a good spot to see. The Rainbow Falls trail starts out at a small parking area and is about 7.5 miles long at ~10% grade, so it's no small walk in the park.
We hit the trail at ~8:30 AM. Rainbow Falls was a bit of a disappointment because there was very little water flowing over it, and it doesn't seem that you can get very close to it. I'm sure it would be a whole lot nicer if there had been more water. Near the top of Mt. LeConte there is a lodge, basically a set of very rustic cabins that you can stay in for an arm & a leg for a night (no electricity & no running water). At ~$120/night, I guess you pay for the experience (and not the service!). Maybe someday when I've got more money. Once at the lodge, we ate our lunch & checked out the main general building, which has some old frontier days stuff around that's neat to look at. But the lodge is not at the peak, so after a bit of rest & food, we headed on up the trail to get to the top. Just before getting to the peak, there is a spectacular overlook facing to the South. The peak itself is kind of unusual - there are no great views at this point, it is just a spot off the trail to the right where there is a huge pile of rocks. I guess you're supposed to bring a small rock with you up the mountain and make it a bit taller.
But other than relaying that story, I also am writing this blog post because I've recently discovered EveryTrail.com, a website that is designed for hiking & other outdoor adventure. EveryTrail lets you set up an account, fill out a profile, and then start loading up your trips. Trips basically include a GPS path and a set of geotagged photos, as you can see in the map/slideshow above. If you don't have a GPS track to upload, you can draw it on a map or just use photos, but obviously the GPS track is the way to go. While on the hike up LeConte, I had my at the time brand new Droid2Global with me, so I used it to record the track & take pictures as we went. I recorded the track using the MyTracks app by Google. The track isn't bad, especially when you consider the amount of tree cover and the fact that the phone was in my pocket much of the time. However, the track recorded is way too long, over 10 miles supposedly on a 7.5 mi trail. It overestimates the distance traveled when it doesn't have good GPS signal and the calculated location is not known really precisely. EveryTrail requires that you upload a "GPS file", which of course is not a specific real thing; I assume it can read most any type of file recorded by the various GPSr makers. I saved MyTracks data on my phone as a .GPX file format, emailed it to myself, & it loaded up very easily on my home PC. EveryTrail also offers mobile apps for Android & iPhone, but I've not used it much yet. I had previously already loaded up the pictures I had taken into a PicasaWeb photo album. That was fortuitous, because EveryTrail allows you to use your Google login to access your PicasaWeb folders, so importing my photos into the trip was super easy. It will also allow you to use Flickr or YouTube or direct uploads. One issue, however, was that when EveryTrail puts together a slideshow of your photos, it determines the order of the photos based on the timestamp. Since some of my photos I took on the way down, that didn't produce a good slideshow. There is no easy, obvious way to edit the order of photos in EveryTrail, but the workaround is to open up your photos on the website after you've imported them and change the timestamp to force them into the order that you want. Supposedly you can add video files too, but it didn't seem to recognize mine as anything other than still shots, so I baleeted them from the final trip. Overall, I think it's a decent site and I'll probably continue to use it to record hiking trips.
Mt. LeConte (~6600') is one of the highest peaks in Great Smoky Mtn. Natl. Park, and it is the tallest in eastern TN from immediate base to top.
We decided to go big - there are several trails one can take to get to the top, and we picked one of the longer routes. One of the longer trails takes you past Rainbow Falls, which is the highest single drop waterfall in the park, and that sounded like a good spot to see. The Rainbow Falls trail starts out at a small parking area and is about 7.5 miles long at ~10% grade, so it's no small walk in the park.
Hike up Mt. LeConte via Rainbow Falls Trail
We hit the trail at ~8:30 AM. Rainbow Falls was a bit of a disappointment because there was very little water flowing over it, and it doesn't seem that you can get very close to it. I'm sure it would be a whole lot nicer if there had been more water. Near the top of Mt. LeConte there is a lodge, basically a set of very rustic cabins that you can stay in for an arm & a leg for a night (no electricity & no running water). At ~$120/night, I guess you pay for the experience (and not the service!). Maybe someday when I've got more money. Once at the lodge, we ate our lunch & checked out the main general building, which has some old frontier days stuff around that's neat to look at. But the lodge is not at the peak, so after a bit of rest & food, we headed on up the trail to get to the top. Just before getting to the peak, there is a spectacular overlook facing to the South. The peak itself is kind of unusual - there are no great views at this point, it is just a spot off the trail to the right where there is a huge pile of rocks. I guess you're supposed to bring a small rock with you up the mountain and make it a bit taller.
But other than relaying that story, I also am writing this blog post because I've recently discovered EveryTrail.com, a website that is designed for hiking & other outdoor adventure. EveryTrail lets you set up an account, fill out a profile, and then start loading up your trips. Trips basically include a GPS path and a set of geotagged photos, as you can see in the map/slideshow above. If you don't have a GPS track to upload, you can draw it on a map or just use photos, but obviously the GPS track is the way to go. While on the hike up LeConte, I had my at the time brand new Droid2Global with me, so I used it to record the track & take pictures as we went. I recorded the track using the MyTracks app by Google. The track isn't bad, especially when you consider the amount of tree cover and the fact that the phone was in my pocket much of the time. However, the track recorded is way too long, over 10 miles supposedly on a 7.5 mi trail. It overestimates the distance traveled when it doesn't have good GPS signal and the calculated location is not known really precisely. EveryTrail requires that you upload a "GPS file", which of course is not a specific real thing; I assume it can read most any type of file recorded by the various GPSr makers. I saved MyTracks data on my phone as a .GPX file format, emailed it to myself, & it loaded up very easily on my home PC. EveryTrail also offers mobile apps for Android & iPhone, but I've not used it much yet. I had previously already loaded up the pictures I had taken into a PicasaWeb photo album. That was fortuitous, because EveryTrail allows you to use your Google login to access your PicasaWeb folders, so importing my photos into the trip was super easy. It will also allow you to use Flickr or YouTube or direct uploads. One issue, however, was that when EveryTrail puts together a slideshow of your photos, it determines the order of the photos based on the timestamp. Since some of my photos I took on the way down, that didn't produce a good slideshow. There is no easy, obvious way to edit the order of photos in EveryTrail, but the workaround is to open up your photos on the website after you've imported them and change the timestamp to force them into the order that you want. Supposedly you can add video files too, but it didn't seem to recognize mine as anything other than still shots, so I baleeted them from the final trip. Overall, I think it's a decent site and I'll probably continue to use it to record hiking trips.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Geology with First Graders
Last week, based on an invite from the teacher, I paid a visit to my oldest daughter's first grade class to talk about geology. I knew they had been learning about sand, so my job was to take it up to 11. I also knew, based on what my daughter brings home, that they had previously talked about solids, liquids, & gases, but otherwise they don't get a whole lot of science in first grade.
I brought with me some samples; the ONU Geology program has lots of samples of rocks & sands (obviously), so I took some especially relevant ones to show the kids.
The main point I tried to get across to them is this: different kinds of sand come from different kinds of rocks. I figured for first graders that wasn't a bad place to start. The idea is to have them connect in their minds that rocks, when eroded, will form sand, and that there is a direct connection between these two kinds of materials. This is, really, their first introduction to the rock cycle.
I took with me 4 samples of sand. The first one is a typical quartz sand in a jar that had a couple of nice shells in it. That one I passed around first and had each student rotate the jar of sand until they found the secret prize inside. Lots of wide eyes and careful looking at this point!
After I had their interest, I then showed them three other sands and three related rocks. The white sand here is loaded with calcareous material, and the white "rocks" are pieces of some kind of coral from the same beach.
The green sand is olivine rich, with black chunks of basalt and white pieces of crushed coral. The green rock is dunite.
The black sand is eroded basalt cinder for the most part, and the black rocks is a basalt with obvious pahoehoe texture on the top surface.
I talked about the three different rocks as representing the three major rock types: the dunite as a metamorphic rock, the basalt as igneous, & the corals as sedimentary. They didn't quite pick up on the differences or the words well (and I didn't expect them to), but they were at least exposed to the terms. They liked the basalt the best - it is a pahoehoe sample from Hawaii, so we talked about lava & how it is a hot, liquid rock that cooled to form this solid material. They were really impressed with that!
Granted the olivine rich sand didn't come from the erosion of dunite, but the samples allowed them to see that there are connections between rocks and sediments.
After we looked at those, we ended with this question: what might happen if you took a sand, and squeezed it really really really hard? You can't do this with your hands, but the Earth is able to squeeze sands hard enough that they turn back into rocks! At this point I pulled out a couple of sandstones that are easily seen as grains of sand that are all stuck together. Minds blown! That was another moment where their eye-brows were all raised. Again, here they were exposed to another idea from the bigger concept of the rock cycle.
It was a really fun experience. These students are considerably younger than the ones I'm used to teaching! And, if I'm totally honest, they are in general a lot more enthusiastic about learning than some college students! :-)
I brought with me some samples; the ONU Geology program has lots of samples of rocks & sands (obviously), so I took some especially relevant ones to show the kids.
The main point I tried to get across to them is this: different kinds of sand come from different kinds of rocks. I figured for first graders that wasn't a bad place to start. The idea is to have them connect in their minds that rocks, when eroded, will form sand, and that there is a direct connection between these two kinds of materials. This is, really, their first introduction to the rock cycle.
After I had their interest, I then showed them three other sands and three related rocks. The white sand here is loaded with calcareous material, and the white "rocks" are pieces of some kind of coral from the same beach.
I talked about the three different rocks as representing the three major rock types: the dunite as a metamorphic rock, the basalt as igneous, & the corals as sedimentary. They didn't quite pick up on the differences or the words well (and I didn't expect them to), but they were at least exposed to the terms. They liked the basalt the best - it is a pahoehoe sample from Hawaii, so we talked about lava & how it is a hot, liquid rock that cooled to form this solid material. They were really impressed with that!
Granted the olivine rich sand didn't come from the erosion of dunite, but the samples allowed them to see that there are connections between rocks and sediments.
It was a really fun experience. These students are considerably younger than the ones I'm used to teaching! And, if I'm totally honest, they are in general a lot more enthusiastic about learning than some college students! :-)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Absurd Attack on College Professors in Wash. Post
An article in the Washington Post has one of the most ridiculous attacks on college professors I've ever seen. The argument basically says us college professors don't work hard enough for the money we make. Which is infuriatingly obtuse. So let's take a closer look, starting with this quote below:
"An executive who works a 40-hour week for 50 weeks puts in a minimum of 2,000 hours yearly. But faculty members teaching 12 to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks spend only 360 to 450 hours per year in the classroom. Even in the unlikely event that they devote an equal amount of time to grading and class preparation, their workload is still only 36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals. Yet they receive the same compensation."
First off, I don't get the same compensation as people with my same credentials get in the non-academic world. I could make twice the money I do if I went to work for an oil company, like some of my friends from grad school did. Good for them! They made a choice for their life that they wanted, and so did I. I choose my career as a professor at a small, liberal arts college because I love it, and it is worth more to me personally than the money I would otherwise make. But let's not pretend there isn't a huge financial difference. In fact, my first year as a professor I made about ~35-40% of the money that my friends from grad school who went to work for Shell & Exxon/Mobile did. Yeah, that's right, a bit more than a third. So this whole "they receive the same compensation" business is simply false, grotesquely false.
Secondly, suggesting that it is "unlikely" that professors spend an hour prepping & grading for every hour they spend in the classroom is absurd, grotesquely absurd. This shows a mind-boggling ignorance of what the job requires. Writing a really good 1 hour lecture can take literally days. Some of my lectures I've spent literally 20+ hours preparing, and that's just for the first time I give it. What takes so much time? To write a good lecture, you must consider the following: 1) What do my students need to know, and how can I boil that down concisely into a few learning goals? One of the first steps of good teaching is to be able to clearly communicate what the student should expect to learn. 2) What do my students already know, which will serve as knowledge & skills from which to build? No one learns anything that they cannot connect to something they already know. This is one of the foundational principals of education theory, that knowledge is constructed by being built upon itself. In other words, to learn something new, you have to connect it to things you already know. 3) What are the details of everything they need to learn? If you are going to teach it, you've got to know it really, really well. It isn't enough to state what they need to know (i.e., the ending point) and know what they already know (the starting point), you have to now fill it all the details of the knowledge & skills you are trying to instill. 4) How should I best organize the main ideas so that the lecture has a logical flow? In a way, this is like building up a wall. You have to start with the bottom layer, and work your way up. You can't add the 5th row of bricks until rows 1-4 are already done. With the world of ideas, the order of the bricks isn't always obvious - as the instructor, it is your job to figure out in what order the concepts should go. 5) Which figures, tables, images, pictures, graphs, videos, & other multimedia should I use to best convey the concepts visually? Visual aids are probably the most important part of any lecture. The pictures must convey the same things that you are going to verbalize. And not all figures are of equal value, especially in science education. Are the images clear, in color, labeled correctly? 6) What examples would best clearly communicate the overall ideas? 7) What physical objects might be useful to bring to class as learning aids, and where will I obtain & store these items? 8) What activities could the students do that will ask them to apply their new knowledge in order to solve some problem? I could go on, but the point I hope is clear: writing a good lecture is a long process! Now, the good thing is that I can store that lecture material on my computer & bring it out again the next time I teach the course - which in my case, is typically every 2 years. So let's say I spent 20 hours on a lecture, and then the next time I teach it, I spend zero hours prepping it - that still means it will take 40 years of my life before the total time I spent giving the lecture will equal the time spent prepping it. And a good teacher doesn't do that - a good teacher reviews his/her own work at a later time with fresh eyes, finds things to change, new information to add, better examples/visuals/activities, etc., that will increase the time spent in the classroom. A good educator not only get an assessment of how well the students are doing, a good educator also gets an assessment on how well he/she is doing, and based on that makes changes that will improve the experience in the future. And all of this is just for preparing a lecture - shall we talk about grading now? :-) Grading is another experience that takes lots & lots of time if it is going to be done well. Why? Because in order for students to learn from their mistakes, they need rich feedback on their performance. They need more than a score or a percentage, they need explanation & clarification.
Finally, let's also dispel this myth that class prep & grading are the only things that professors do. Students ask questions, want to spend time with you individually to help them on assignments, ask you for recommendation letters, ask you for advice on jobs, careers, & graduate school, attend their senior exhibition/presentation, and ask you for an opportunity to take an exam or work on a lab at another time. Suppose you catch some students who have clearly cheated on an assignment. Clearing that up is going to take some time, if you want to do it the right way, a way that will help the student recognize their mistake, acknowledge it, make it right, and become a better person that this world desperately needs. You can't do that in an hour. You also attend faculty meetings where you consider new courses & programs, listen to guest speakers or fellow faculty discuss a topic, and serve on committees for hiring, promotions, academic integrity issues, & policy making. I could go on, but I think I've made my point. There is more that could be said about this opinion piece - the part I quoted above is only one small portion of it. But I've got to get back to grading.
I love my job. I love working with my students. I'm right where I want to be in my career. But it takes a lot of work, and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong, grotesquely wrong.
"An executive who works a 40-hour week for 50 weeks puts in a minimum of 2,000 hours yearly. But faculty members teaching 12 to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks spend only 360 to 450 hours per year in the classroom. Even in the unlikely event that they devote an equal amount of time to grading and class preparation, their workload is still only 36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals. Yet they receive the same compensation."
First off, I don't get the same compensation as people with my same credentials get in the non-academic world. I could make twice the money I do if I went to work for an oil company, like some of my friends from grad school did. Good for them! They made a choice for their life that they wanted, and so did I. I choose my career as a professor at a small, liberal arts college because I love it, and it is worth more to me personally than the money I would otherwise make. But let's not pretend there isn't a huge financial difference. In fact, my first year as a professor I made about ~35-40% of the money that my friends from grad school who went to work for Shell & Exxon/Mobile did. Yeah, that's right, a bit more than a third. So this whole "they receive the same compensation" business is simply false, grotesquely false.
Secondly, suggesting that it is "unlikely" that professors spend an hour prepping & grading for every hour they spend in the classroom is absurd, grotesquely absurd. This shows a mind-boggling ignorance of what the job requires. Writing a really good 1 hour lecture can take literally days. Some of my lectures I've spent literally 20+ hours preparing, and that's just for the first time I give it. What takes so much time? To write a good lecture, you must consider the following: 1) What do my students need to know, and how can I boil that down concisely into a few learning goals? One of the first steps of good teaching is to be able to clearly communicate what the student should expect to learn. 2) What do my students already know, which will serve as knowledge & skills from which to build? No one learns anything that they cannot connect to something they already know. This is one of the foundational principals of education theory, that knowledge is constructed by being built upon itself. In other words, to learn something new, you have to connect it to things you already know. 3) What are the details of everything they need to learn? If you are going to teach it, you've got to know it really, really well. It isn't enough to state what they need to know (i.e., the ending point) and know what they already know (the starting point), you have to now fill it all the details of the knowledge & skills you are trying to instill. 4) How should I best organize the main ideas so that the lecture has a logical flow? In a way, this is like building up a wall. You have to start with the bottom layer, and work your way up. You can't add the 5th row of bricks until rows 1-4 are already done. With the world of ideas, the order of the bricks isn't always obvious - as the instructor, it is your job to figure out in what order the concepts should go. 5) Which figures, tables, images, pictures, graphs, videos, & other multimedia should I use to best convey the concepts visually? Visual aids are probably the most important part of any lecture. The pictures must convey the same things that you are going to verbalize. And not all figures are of equal value, especially in science education. Are the images clear, in color, labeled correctly? 6) What examples would best clearly communicate the overall ideas? 7) What physical objects might be useful to bring to class as learning aids, and where will I obtain & store these items? 8) What activities could the students do that will ask them to apply their new knowledge in order to solve some problem? I could go on, but the point I hope is clear: writing a good lecture is a long process! Now, the good thing is that I can store that lecture material on my computer & bring it out again the next time I teach the course - which in my case, is typically every 2 years. So let's say I spent 20 hours on a lecture, and then the next time I teach it, I spend zero hours prepping it - that still means it will take 40 years of my life before the total time I spent giving the lecture will equal the time spent prepping it. And a good teacher doesn't do that - a good teacher reviews his/her own work at a later time with fresh eyes, finds things to change, new information to add, better examples/visuals/activities, etc., that will increase the time spent in the classroom. A good educator not only get an assessment of how well the students are doing, a good educator also gets an assessment on how well he/she is doing, and based on that makes changes that will improve the experience in the future. And all of this is just for preparing a lecture - shall we talk about grading now? :-) Grading is another experience that takes lots & lots of time if it is going to be done well. Why? Because in order for students to learn from their mistakes, they need rich feedback on their performance. They need more than a score or a percentage, they need explanation & clarification.
Finally, let's also dispel this myth that class prep & grading are the only things that professors do. Students ask questions, want to spend time with you individually to help them on assignments, ask you for recommendation letters, ask you for advice on jobs, careers, & graduate school, attend their senior exhibition/presentation, and ask you for an opportunity to take an exam or work on a lab at another time. Suppose you catch some students who have clearly cheated on an assignment. Clearing that up is going to take some time, if you want to do it the right way, a way that will help the student recognize their mistake, acknowledge it, make it right, and become a better person that this world desperately needs. You can't do that in an hour. You also attend faculty meetings where you consider new courses & programs, listen to guest speakers or fellow faculty discuss a topic, and serve on committees for hiring, promotions, academic integrity issues, & policy making. I could go on, but I think I've made my point. There is more that could be said about this opinion piece - the part I quoted above is only one small portion of it. But I've got to get back to grading.
I love my job. I love working with my students. I'm right where I want to be in my career. But it takes a lot of work, and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong, grotesquely wrong.
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