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GEOSCIENCES 001

Introduction to Physical Geology - Spring 2012

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Professor: David Bice Email: dmb53@psu.edu

Office: 540 Deike (865-4477) Office Hours: M 2:30-3:30, W 10-11 & by appointment

Class Meetings: Monday Wednesday Friday: 12:20 – 1:10

Location: 129 Waring (Lecture) and 4 Deike (lab)

Credit Hours: 3 Credits. You must complete the lab section of this course to receive a grade. There is no prerequisite for this course.

Teaching Assistants: Piyali Chanda pvc5099@psu.edu and Sonny Harman ceharmanjr@psu.edu

Text: Earth, Portrait of a Planet 4^th or3^rd ed. by Stephen Marshak (used copies in bookstore or amazon.com, or as an e-book (www.nortonebooks.com/welcome.asp ; is listed under Geology. You can buy the online e-book the downloadable e-book of the Marshak text.  The downloadable e-book can be saved to your computer desktop, so you don’t always have to have an internet connection to access it.   Passwords expire after one year).

Lab Manual: The lab exercises will be available on ANGEL. It is your responsibility to print out the lab exercise each week and bring it to lab. If you neglect to bring the printed lab exercise, you cannot complete the lab and you will not receive a grade.

Lab Materials: 10x hand lens (available at bookstore), colored pencils, pencils, erasers and field notebook.

Supplementary Materials: You are encouraged to make use of the EMS library on the 1st floor of Deike if you are interested in pursuing any aspect of the Geosciences or related fields. In addition, if you have any questions, you have your professor and teaching assistants as a resource!

Readings

In the syllabus, the topic for each day is accompanied by a reading assignment that should be completed before class or lab. Most of the readings come from the textbook; other readings will come from various sources on the web. These readings are intended to provide a basis and context for the things we'll discuss in class. If you follow the readings, you'll have a much easier time seeing how it all fits together. In general, you should think of your textbook and the library as resources for answering questions - learn how to use these resources well and you'll have the means for unlimited learning. You cannot expect everything important to be served up to you - you have to go out and forage a bit and find your own answers sometimes. Speaking of foraging, a word of caution about information on the web – not all of the information that pops up in a Google search is trustworthy.  There are good sources of geoscience information on the web and almost all of these are connected with someone at a university or college or a government lab or a museum; Wikipedia is generally a reliable source as well. So, scrutinize the sources of the information you find on the web.

Field Labs

There will be several field labs during the course in order to get some hands-on experience looking at and interpreting rocks; many of these labs will lead to an overall understanding of the geologic history of the State College area. Expenses related to these field trips will be charged to you after the class is over – it will be in the neighborhood of $40. Come prepared with appropriate clothing - boots are always recommended; raingear will sometimes be needed and should always be brought along.

GRADING

Your performance in this course will be evaluated in several ways.

Exams: Multiple choice. There will be three midterm exams (no final), each worth 15%, making a total of 45%.

Laboratory Work: The work you do in lab is critical to your understanding of the geological sciences. You will complete and hand in laboratory work after each lab session. Lab reports will make up 35% of your final grade. Lab reports are due at the end of the lab session, unless otherwise noted by your teaching assistant. Late labs will be penalized by 10% per day and they cannot be handed in after the graded labs for that exercise have been returned. No make up labs will be allowed. Please contact your lab TA if you cannot make a lab for any reason.

Homework Problems: There will be a variety of homework problems each week. These will be on-line exercises and will make up 20% of your grade. Deadlines will be strictly enforced.

Attendance: Your presence in lecture and lab is necessary for this course. In class, we will discuss current events, images and movies of geologic phenomena you will not find in the textbook. I also conduct in-class experiments and bring in rock samples and props to demonstrate geologic processes and phenomena. These may reappear on exams. I want you to do well… so show up for class! For most classes, there will be a powerpoint or pdf posted on ANGEL shortly after the class period, but these will almost always be devoid of any notes or text, so you can’t rely on them as a substitute for coming to class.

If you have an excused absence, you must provide written supporting documentation before the absence (if, for example, it involves a university-sanctioned field trip) or within a week after class (in the case of a medical absence).

Labs: Setting up the laboratory exercises takes a lot of time on the part of the Geosc 001 teaching assistants. If you will miss a lab, you MUST inform your teaching assistant as soon as possible (BEFORE the lab) to discuss the situation. The teaching assistants are under NO obligation to set up laboratory exercises from previous weeks to accommodate absences.

Academic Integrity: I expect that you will treat your professors, yourself, and your fellow students with respect during the course. Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated. You will have the opportunity to work in groups, both in class and in lab. However, you may not provide or receive assistance on exams, labs, quizzes or projects unless authorized by your professor or teaching assistant. If you copy or plagiarize another person's work or idea (in class, from a published work, from the web, etc.) without proper acknowledgement you are in violation of the trust we have in you. You will receive a zero grade for the assignment or exam. This will significantly lower your grade for the course, by a minimum of one letter grade.

General goals of the course

We hope that by the end of this course, you will have a good, basic understanding of how the whole Earth system works -- the processes that operate in the interior, on the surface, and above the surface. Through this, we hope you will gain a sense of the Earth as a complex, dynamic system in which there is a high degree of connectedness. You should also learn something about how the Earth has changed through its long history, and what the future might hold. In addition, we hope that you will get a feeling for how geologists think -- how we know what we do about the Earth, and how we go about solving problems in the earth sciences. We hope that this course will also provide you with some insight into how people are affected by geologic processes, how our activities can in turn affect the Earth, and how an understanding of geology can lead to a more intelligent way of occupying the Earth. These are the kinds of things that we hope you will retain from this course, along with a new way of looking at the Earth around you. These are ambitious goals and they won't be realized without a lot of hard work, but we think we can have fun along the way too.

SCHEDULE OF LECTURE TOPICS, READINGS, AND LABS

Date	Topic	Reading	Lab
09-Jan	Intro to the Earth System	Ch 1	No labs first week
11-Jan	How was the Earth made?	Ch 1,2
13-Jan	The Core to Continental Drift	Ch 3, Interlude A
16-Jan	MLK Jr. DAY
18-Jan	No Class		Maps
20-Jan	Plate Tectonics: How the Whole Thing Works	Ch 4
23-Jan	More Plate Tectonics	Ch. 4
25-Jan	Plate Tectonics and the Rock Cycle	Interlude B & C	Plate Tectonics
27-Jan	Minerals: Building Blocks of Rocks	Ch 5
30-Jan	Igneous Rocks	Ch 6	Minerals (read ch. 5)
1-Feb	Volcanoes	Ch 9
3-Feb	Volcanic Hazards	Ch 9
6- Feb	Weathering & Erosion	Ch 7	Igneous Rocks
8- Feb	Soils & Sedimentary Rocks	Ch 7
10- Feb	Exam 1
13- Feb	Interpreting Sed Rocks	Ch 7	Sedimentary Rocks (read ch. 7, interlude B)
15- Feb	Metamorphic Rocks	Ch 8
17- Feb	Geologic Time	Ch 12
20- Feb	No Class		Geologic Time
22- Feb	More Geologic Time
24- Feb	More Sed Rx.	Ch 12
27-Feb	Earthquakes	Ch 10, Interlude D	Earthquakes (read ch. 10)
29-Feb	Seismic Hazards	Ch 10
2-Mar	Geologic Structures	Ch 11
5- Mar	Spring Break
7- Mar	Spring Break		No Lab (obviously)
9- Mar	Spring Break
12- Mar	Fossils, Life on Earth, Mass Extinctions	Interlude E & Web Reading	Geologic Maps
14- Mar	KT Boundary Story	Ch 16
16- Mar	Exam 2
19- Mar	The Global Water Cycle & Intro to the Oceans	Ch 18	Exploring the Oceans (read ch. 18)
21- Mar	Ocean Circulation	Ch 18
23- Mar	More Oceans	Ch 18
26- Mar	How Does the Climate System Work?	Ch 20
28- Mar	The Global Carbon Cycle	Reading	Modeling the Climate System
30- Mar	Carbon Cycle History & Future
2-Apr	Rivers — Physical Processes	Ch 17
4- Apr	Rivers, Floods, Humans	Ch 17	Field Lab Spring Creek
6- Apr	Landslides	Ch 16
9- Apr	Geology of PA	p. 391-394; 461-469
11- Apr	Geology of Oil and Gas	Ch 14	Field Lab Salona/Coburn
13- Apr	Groundwater	Ch 19
16- Apr	Glaciers, Ice Ages	Ch 22
18- Apr	No Class		Field Lab Bald Eagle/Reedsville
20- Apr	Recent Climate Change	IPCC Summary
23- Apr	Future Climate Change	IPCC Summary
25- Apr	Summary
27- Apr	Exam 3

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