HR: 1340h
AN: ED13C-1163    [Abstracts]
TI: Demonstrations in Introductory Geophysics
AU: * Schramm, K A
EM: schramm@earth.northwestern.edu
AF: Northwestern University, Dept. of Geological Sciences 1850 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208-0868 United States
AU: Stein, S
EM: seth@earth.northwestern.edu
AF: Northwestern University, Dept. of Geological Sciences 1850 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208-0868 United States
AU: van der Lee, S
EM: suzan@earth.northwestern.edu
AF: Northwestern University, Dept. of Geological Sciences 1850 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208-0868 United States
AU: Swafford, L
EM: swafford@earth.northwestern.edu
AF: Northwestern University, Dept. of Geological Sciences 1850 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208-0868 United States
AU: Klosko, E
EM: eryn.klosko@sunywcc.edu
AF: Westchester Community College, Physical Sciences Dept 75 Grasslands Road, Valhalla, NY 10595-1693
AU: DeLaughter, J
EM: jdelaughter@earthscope.org
AF: Earthscope, 1200 New York Ave, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005 United States
AU: Wysession, M
EM: michael@wucore.wustl.edu
AF: Washington University in St. Louis, Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences 1 Brookings Dr, St/ Louis, MO 63130-4862 United States
AB: Geophysical concepts are challenging to teach at introductory levels, because students need to understand both the underlying physics and its geological application. To address this, our introductory courses include class demonstrations and experiments to demonstrate underlying physical principles and their geological applications. Demonstrations and experiments have several advantages over computer simulations. First, computer simulations "work" even if the basic principle is wrong. In contrast, simple demonstrations show that a principle is physically correct, rather than a product of computer graphics. Second, many students are unfamiliar with once-standard experiments demonstrating ideas of classical physics used in geophysics. Demonstrations are chosen that we consider stimulating, relevant, inexpensive, and easy to conduct in a non-lab classroom. These come in several groups. Many deal with aspects of seismic waves, using springs, light beams, and other methods such as talking from outside the room to illustrate the frequency dependence of diffraction (hearing but not seeing around a corner). Others deal with heat and mass transfer, such as illustrating fractional crystallization with apple juice and the surface/volume effect in planetary evolution with ice. Plate motions are illustrated with paper cutouts showing effects like motion on transform faults and how the Euler vector geometry changes a plate boundary from spreading, to strike-slip, to convergence along the Pacific-North America boundary from the Gulf of California to Alaska. Radioactive decay is simulated by having the class rise and sit down as a result of coin flips (one tail versus two gives different decay rates and hence half lives). This sessions' goal of exchanging information about demonstrations is an excellent idea: some of ours are described on http://www.earth.nwu.edu/people/seth/202.
UR: http://www.earth.nwu.edu/people/seth/202
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0825 Teaching methods
DE: 0845 Instructional tools
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005