[Geology2] Re: Nearly 3,900 New Maps in Time for Summer

He was indeed a good teacher. He made really great use of visuals with the models he constructed, sometimes coming out of the basement covered in white dust from the plaster and sand he used to make layered models of the earth's crust - he would squeeze the layers as the plaster began to harden and make videos of them deforming, fist as plastic and then rigid materials.

Another teacher there would make a sandwich with peanut butter and marshmallow cream in his class and use it to show deformation, and at the end would eat it, which put a good cap on the lecture.

Physical geology is easy to teach and the students generally love it because it is so visual. Historical geology is more cerebral and much less popular.

I'm distressed at the state of education too. I've never understood the idea that more testing will improve the system. Testing isn't the problem, it is the way the subject material is delivered. I think the education system needs a real revolution. But, then, I don't know enough about it to really criticize. But I do anyway.

Clay


--- In geology2@yahoogroups.com, Allison Maricelli-Loukanis <allison.ann@...> wrote:
>
>  This guy sounds like a good teacher. It is a pity that our high schools don't attract this kind of person. OF course the oil companies pay more.  I have always thought it a shame that  basic geology was not taught in school. Fossil fuels for example.. plate tectonics and learning the different rocks. We  touched on this stuff in science but not to any great depth. Kids should learn more about  the economics of removing oil, gas and etc from the ground along with alternative fuels... which is a current and hot topic right now. Currently there is no  way our highschoolers would be talking about horst and graben structures as a general rule. OR anything else of real educational use esp if this Common Core thing happens. sigh...Allison
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Kim Noyes <kimnoyes@...>
> To: Geology2 <geology2@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, August 2, 2013 2:10 AM
> Subject: Re: [Geology2] Re: Nearly 3,900 New Maps in Time for Summer
>
>
>
>  
> Thanks for the follow-up comment!
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Clay Chesney <fossrme@...> wrote:
>
>
> > 
> >Talking about grabens reminds me of some research work that a prof was doing at one of the colleges where I taught. He would spend hours in the basement of the geology building creating physical models of geologic structures. One of his most interesting ones simulated horst and graben structure by using simple wooden blocks floating in water.    He cut a 2x4 crosswise with angled cuts to make v-shaped wedges, half of them pointing up and half pointing down.  When the board, cut this way, was put into water the wedges with the broad base floated upwards and the ones with the broad side on top moved down.  It was a very simple demonstration that vertical movement on landmasses doesn't require vertical tectonic forces;  if the crust is fractured in the right way the blocks will move up or down because they are resting on a plastic zone below and isostasy will cause them to adjust vertically. 
> > 
> >I thought this was a clever illustration of how isostasy works and how something like the basin-and-range area of the western US formed.  The professor, John Sales, went off to work for one of the oil companies and I never heard of him again, which is probably to be expected because I didn't work in the area of structural geology.  His model really belonged with the earlier era of structural geology that dealt with forces and land movements in the broadest sense.  By the time he developed it the science had moved on to more sophisticated analysis, but I think he added something important to the basic understanding of how and why crustal units move.  I would be interested to know if that conceptual model became embedded in the science.
>
>
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