Welcome to the Laboratory for Introduction to Geology. Geology is a fun, exciting, and important science – the study of mountains and canyons, earthquakes and volcanoes, dinosaurs, and gemstones. We hear about geology almost on a daily basis: an earthquake in Japan, a volcano erupting in Hawaii, a flood in the Midwest, velociraptors in the movies. Or, we see these things on our own as we drive across the state or country, or hike with family and friends in a nearby mountain range. Behind the scenes, geology guides the search for most of the natural resources we use – petroleum, copper, gold, diamonds, limestone for cement, and groundwater. If a natural resource is not grown, a geologist probably helped find it. Geology is also used every day to decide where we should or shouldn't build things, such as homes, factories, and roads. Geologists study volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, floods, and other natural hazards. And, they help us understand the world – past, present, and future.
You don't have to be a natural-history expert to recognize that the Southwest has some amazing scenery – the red rocks of Sedona and Canyonlands, the valleys and mountain ranges of the Sonoran Desert, and the Grand Canyon. You might suspect that such natural beauty is due to some unusual sequence of geologic events. In fact, geologists around the world regard the Southwest as one of the most interesting and spectacular geologic provinces anywhere. The ideal way to teach or learn geology in such a special place is to take a long trip and just experience it, outdoors, in person. If that approach isn't possible, the next best thing is to bring some of the outdoors into the classroom. This lab will try some of both approaches.
We designed this course to be interesting, fun, intellectually challenging, and to help you gain some knowledge and skills that will be useful in many aspects of life. In developing our goals for this course, two main considerations guided our approach. First, most of you are not geology majors, or science majors of any kind, and this course may be the only science class you take in college. This lab, therefore, is not simply a retrofit, watered-down version of a majors-only lab, but it is designed to give you a flavor for how science, specifically geology, is actually done. Second, many science courses turn students off to science, partly because of an overemphasis on terminology, isolated facts, and knowledge students know they will never use again. This course uses an absolute minimum of technical terms, approaches geology in an integrated way, and emphasizes those aspects of geology you are most likely to enjoy and use again.
The lab is designed so that when you finish this course and go on a hike or drive into the country, you will be able to do the following:
Finally, you will get a chance to apply your new geologic skills to the geology around ASU and to the geology of your hometown or some other place that is special to you. And, we think you'll have fun doing it.
In redesigning this course, we decided that it should be authentic and proceed in the same way that geologic studies are actually done. One of the most common ways that geologic studies are carried out is to go into an area, observe the rocks and geologic features, locate these features on a map, and then figure out the sequence of geologic events that formed what we see. That is exactly what we will do in this course.
To be able to do this, you'll start by learning a few skills, such as how to locate yourself on a map, how to identify rocks and minerals, and how to observe landscapes and reconstruct the sequence of events. You will gain these skills while exploring a geologically interesting place called Painted Canyon. You will explore the geology of Painted Canyon via some computer-generated images and some photographs and movies of real rocks and minerals, such as those you would find in any canyon in the Southwest. You will use what you learn from the rocks and minerals to make land-use decisions, such as where within Painted Canyon to build a colony and find mineral resources needed to sustain your colony. Painted Canyon is not a real place, but is a virtual world that is geologically similar to Arizona and the Southwest.
After working on Painted Canyon, you will apply your new skills to some familiar and geologically interesting places in Arizona, including the Grand Canyon, Superior, and Jerome. Then, you will study some geology adjacent to the ASU campus, and use any library that has topographic and geologic maps to find out some things about the geology of your hometown. ASU’s Map Collection library will be the easiest and best to use for most students because of the extensive collection of maps, and the map librarians are used to, and understand, this assignment. If you do not live near the ASU Map Collection library, you will need to find a library near you that has topographic and geologic maps.
For each module, you will be interacting with web pages that contain the content, while entering most of your answers into Canvas. We recommend that you fill out worksheets at the end of each module in this lab manual, and then enter all of your answers into Canvas. This will be the safest way since it ensures that you have a record of your answers in case you have computer issues while completing the module. A less safe alternative is to have a browser page open to Canvas so that you can enter your answers directly into Canvas while you do the online module. The questions in Canvas will cover the same information as the worksheets, but may be in a different format, such as multiple-choice questions.
Some exercises require you to complete a worksheet and upload it to Canvas for hand grading. For these exercises you may need the following items.