Teaching Geology

Siccar Point and Teaching the History of Geology

The concept of the rock cycle and the “indefinite” length of geologic time were outlined first by James Hutton before he had ever seen an unconformity. Hutton drew general support of his theory from existing observations of unconformities from accounts in French, which he re-interpreted in light of his own ideas. Hutton then found his own field examples to test his ideas before coming upon Sicc...

Use of ``virtual'' Field Trips in Teaching Introductory Geology

ÐWe designed a series of case studies for Introductory Geology Laboratory courses using computer visualization techniques integrated with traditional laboratory materials. These consist of a comprehensive case study which requires three two-hour long laboratory periods to complete, and several shorter case studies requiring one or two, two-hour laboratory periods. Currently we have prototypes o...

Marine Geology

To constrain the timing of rifting in the western, eastern, and northern parts of the Alboran Sea basin, seismic reflectors, corresponding to biostratigraphic boundaries and unconformities from the Miocene to Recent, are correlated using synthetic seismograms. Regions of adjacent coeval compression and extension are found in the Alboran Sea basin. Normal faulting continues in parts of the easte...

Cognitive Science Literature as a Framework for Research and Teaching with Visualizations in Geology

Geology is a complex, semantically rich domain involving the interpretation of geological maps as external visualizations. Geological maps are complex in particular because 3-dimensional features must be inferred from 2-dimensional representations depicted by differing line types and weights. Modeling building, as an internal mental activity, is also required in order to achieve deep understand...

Environmental Geology and Planning