Geology of Earth and Planets
With Paul Doherty, John Lahr, and Modesto
Tamez
This set of lessons is available online at
http://www.exo.net/~pauld
The present is the key to the
past.
James Hutton 1785
All you need to know about geology
The Rocks on the summit of Mt. Everest
are Marine Limestone.
John McPhee
A draft plan of what we might do.
Day 1 Introductions of participants: Planets,
orbits, rotations, web resources. How Planets Form:
Hydrogen is an odorless, colorless gas
that after 13 billion years produces people. Carl Sagan
Day 2 Planetary Magnetism, radioactive
dating
Atomic Theory: "All ordinary matter is
made of atoms, small indivisible particles which attract each
other when a little ways apart and repel each other when close."
Richard Feynman
- Where's
North?, hang magnets and they all hang
in the same orientation.
- Magnetic
Poles, likes repel and unlikes attract,
so why does the north pole of a magnet point north?
- Magnetic
Globe, explore the magnetic field of
the earth.
-
Magnetic
field of planets, images of planetary
magnetic fields.
- Magnetic
Tape, use pieces of magnetic tape to
model continental drift
also, Bits and Bytes, Snack.
- Film can and black sand model of
magnetization. By Tien.
- Radioactive
decay model, Snack, toss dice to show
the half-life of radioactive decay. Math
Root.
Day 3 Gravity, tides, cratering, icy bodies,
atmosphere, hydrosphere,cryosphere
In the outer solar system think of liquid
water as molten ice. Phil Karlton
- PD
craters, drop steel ball bearings into
spice-covered salt to study impact craters.
- Crater
Illusion, change the lighting on a
crater and make it look like a mound.
- Playdough
Moon, how big is the moon relative to
earth?
- Spin
a koosh, planetary equatorial
bulges
- Tide-o-matic,
explore how tides are made.
- Icy
bodies, use dry ice on warm water to
make patterns like comets with tails.
- Planet
shapes, the fundamental building blocks
of planet shape.
Day 4 Seismology, earth's interior,
- Slinky
models, model earthquake waves with
slinkies, P, S, Raleigh and Love. See also Seismic
Slinky
- Squeezebox, create layered sediments from sand
and flour, then squeeze the layers and observe folding and
faulting.
- Pasta
quake, break spaghetti to model the
energy in a quake.
- Shake
Table, build it and test
structures.
- Liquefaction,
shake a wet sandy sediment and liquefy it.
- Who's Fault is it? Model how seismologists
locate an epicenter by holding hands.
- Model of the Earth's interior, mark a scale
model of the earth's interior on a sidewalk.
- Use silly putty to model mantle rock, on a
short time scale it is brittle, over longer times it
flows.
- Highway
Seismograph, hold a pen against a paper
at arms length and drive down a bumpy road to make your own
seismogram.
Day 5 Teachers present lessons.
Day 6 Planetary Atmospheres, Volcanos
MT
- Boyle-ing
water, boil water in a syringe by
reducing pressure to Martian values.
- Magnetic
Atmosphere Model, stack magnets on a
pencil to model the density of the atmosphere versus
height.
- Water
Cycle Video, watch the video by Andre
Zdravic and make a script for it.
- Polyurethane
foam volcano, liquids which create foam
when mixed can be purchased at TAP plastics. Mix them in a cup
then cover the cup with sand and watch the eruption.
- Chocolate
syrup pillow lava, Hershey's Magic
syrup when squirted out underwater creates pillow lava structures.
See the movie "Fire Under the Sea."
-
Chocolate
Volcano, Make double strength clear
Jell-O, inject chocolate pudding from a syringe from below,
observe dikes and sill.
Day 7 Mapping part 1
- Mercator Your Face, exhibit. Make a mercator
projection of an image of your face.
- Use nesting clear plastic boxes to make
topographic models.
- Make a clay mountain, slice it into layers,
trace the layers on a piece of paper to make the topographic
map.
- Topographic mapping, use surveying instruments
to map a slice through a hill. This day we survey the
map.
- Create a topographic model of a landform from
a map by cutting out patterns of contour lines in construction
paper and hot melt gluing the construction paper together spaced
by pieces of drinking straws.
Day 8 Mapping p2 MT
- This day we make the map.
- See the movie "Fire Under the Sea." How pillow
lava is formed.
Day 9 Subway to Subduction SF, Marin,
triangulation.
- Visit the San Franciscan formation in San
Francisco, see slicknesides in chert along a fault.
- Visit the Marin Headlands, see pillow lavas
and deformed chert layers.
- Use triangulation to measure the distance to
the golden gate bridge.
Day 10 Teachers present lessons.
Web
Resources, a compilation of
information on the web about planetary geology.
Return to Geology
Institute