Taking 3rd graders into the field

One of the objectives in 3rd grade science around here is to see examples of each rock type. What better way to that than by taking the kids out to see the rocks in situ (and even take home a sample or two)

The day started in the classroom with a quick reminder of the parts of the rock cycle. Once we established the names of the three main rock types, it was time to head for the buses.

The big yellow taxi took the 2 teachers, 4 chaperone's, 32 school kids and 1 geologist up into the nearby mountains. Once in place, I showed them some local sand stone and limestone and then asked the kids to examine the rock and describe what they saw. My goal was to have them see geology as a descriptive and interpretive science so we stopped a number of times so the kids could look at the bed rock or pick up pieces of rock. You just can't stop a bunch of 8 year olds from picking up rocks!

We ended the day with a hike up to an outcrop of the Uncompaghre formation and a view across the valley of a pretty nice unconformity. Here the entire class is pointing towards the missing billion years of earth history.

We ended the day by telling the story that we heard from the rocks.

The JASON Project: Operation Tectonic Fury

About once a year I get invited to Washington DC for the annual training of the newest JASON project curriculum. JASON has been around for many years. The early years were site specific, where they would mount an expedition, invite a few kids and teachers along and then invite the middle schools of the world to join with some live video feed from far flung locations.

The new JASON is more curriculum based. Before this year, the new JASON curricula consisted of weather, ecology and energy. This year I was excited to see the roll out of the newest Geology based JASON curriculum: Operation Tectonic Fury. The idea behind all of JASON is that we need to get middle school kids excited about science. JASON writers team up with scientists who are working on some pretty interesting stuff and then share this cutting edge research while developing the building blocks of the science. In this case, the researchers are examining crystal growth, soil formation in the aftermath of volcanic eruptions, looking for candidate locations for carbon sequestration and creating more detailed maps of the ocean floor. As the writing begins, a group of students, called "Argonauts" are picked from applications from all over the world. The Argonauts, accompanied by Argonaut teachers then visit the research areas where a camera crew video tapes lessons that pertain to the "unit" being studied.

Because JASON is a part of National Geographic and has partners the likes of NOAA, NASA and Oak Ridge labs, the research is fascinating and the product is excellent.

However, in my mind what sticks out as best in the whole JASON experience are the hands on labs that are created for each concept. In this day of school budget being slashed, the labs must be inexpensive to replicate but still must show the concept being taught. Too many times in my career have I seen labs that don't clearly show the concept being taught. Not here. The labs are inexpensive, easy to do and make a statement about the concept being taught. In Operation Tectonic Fury, labs ranged from the simple rock and mineral identification to modeling convection currents in the mantle resulting in moving plates and exercises with both relative and absolute dating. The IT department has also made some fantastic online games for all the JASON curricula. I am sure the teachers play these games as often as the kids do.

Everything JASON does is designed to help kids discover scientific concepts through inquiry. It does a good job.

I wanted to share my experiences with the rest of the geoblogosphere and invite you to visit the JASON site at jason.org. All JASON materials are free! Send this along to any 5-8 grade teacher you might know.

just an observation

My wife is an elementary media specialist, which means librarian to most people. I help out as much as I can which means I put lots of books on the shelf. To give you an idea, to date, this school year, she has checked out almost 8000 books. All of which must be put back on the shelves.

My observation: Elementary kids (boys and girls) check out enormous amounts of books in the 500's and 600's of your basic Dewey system. These books are science and applied science. Dinosaurs and horses/farm animals/pets are checked out the most but all of geology, biology, chemistry and physics are well represented.

Why is it then that many of the elementary teachers I meet are so hesitant to teach science when obviously their students are more than ready for the challenge?

Next week I will be in DC the whole week getting more training with the JASON project of National Geographic. This program aims teaching good science to middle school kids.

mining era pipeline

Late last week, when I was looking at dirty snow, I was really scouting out a location for a geology/Colorado History field trip I was going to take a third grade class on. There are many areas to choose from and this trip (I use any excuse to get into the mountains) I wanted to check out Corkscrew Gulch, part of the Red Mountain Mining District. This pipeline was used to carry tailings from the mill down to the Ironton Park area. I am just totally amazed at what these guys did with wooden pipelines. Most of the pipeline is gone, and what is left is still under lots of snow, but I was still able to see a few of the sites.

The pipeline had to cross Corkscrew Gulch. Here, looking up at the pipe from the bottom of the gulch. Rumor has it that this was the second longest suspension bridge in Colorado.

Along the pipeline route there are small wooden boxes where the tailings slurry would drop some quick elevation. The gradient of the pipeline had to be such that the whole slurry would continue downhill. If the gradient was too shallow, gravity wouldn't be able to help the material to move. If the gradient was too steep, the water would run of leaving the solids behind. here you can see the uphill entrance for the pipeline. The downhill exit is below the snow.
This is the view across Corkscrew Gulch. The supports for the bridge are still in place, but the bridge itself is only for use in Indiana Jones movies. No one else would ever dream of crossing the span. There is a ski trail up to this spot and it makes a great afternoon of winter exploring.
The field trip is scheduled for mid-May. There is a chance that the snow might be melted. However, I think I need to scout out some lower elevation spots just in case.

Dirty snow means a quick melt

I was able to get up into the high country this week. The day was warm, the sky was blue and the snow was covered with red dust. This is not the pink snow of bacterial fame, but snow that is covered with the red dust of the Utah and Arizona deserts. The week before we had had some powerful "wind events". There was a record report of winds at Red Mountain Pass at almost 90 mph. These spring winds not only do an efficient job of melting back (or I guess I should say sublimating) the snow. We lost 12% of the snow pack in just a few days. The winds also drop dust particles from the desert onto the snow. Studies have shown that this dirty snow will melt at a much faster rate than clean snow. A recent article in the aspen times discusses this effect.

As the climate changes, models suggest that the American Intermountain West will become warmer and dryer. A warmer and drier desert could provide even more dust in future years. The snow pack, which might be less than average, will melt even faster. No matter why the climate is changing I think we need to start thinking about how we can best survive these changes.

A dirty hillside. Looking towards Hayden Peak.

The north facing slope is still white from new snow on top of the dust. The south facing slope shows the extent of dust as the newer snow has melted.

Snow shoe tracks showing clean snow below the dusty layer.

AW #23 Busy People

Hi all, The 23rd installment of the Accretionary Wedge asked a simple question: What are you working on right now? It was sort of a twitter-on-steroids where we were encouraged to use more than 140 characters in our description. I hope I spelled everything correctly!

My first impression of just how busy everyone is came from Silver Fox who told me she was waay busy but we could use this post about her visit to the Turnagain Arm mudflats. Thanks for the virtual visit to the Alaskan coast.

Our favorite hydrophillic geologist (what a great name for a blog), Anne writes about her many and varied interests concerning the hydro-geosphere from watershed/ climate change interactions to examining landscape evolution in response to changes in hydrologic regimes.

Lockwood sent in his comments about his current project. It doesn't involve geology as much as it involves geologists and the making of a virtual community in the geoblogosphere. A great post with some great ideas.

Another geologist with much on his plate is Kyle at Geologic Frothings. His post comes from his "all about me" page on his blog. His note to me was to look under the biographical stuff and there is a pile of stuff that he is currently working on.

At this point I could see that my question, while seemingly simple was actually difficult for our multi-tasking geo-scientists and bloggers.

Callan at his new home the Mountain Beltway, describes a day in the life of a NOVA geologist. Between teaching and grading and getting ready for the next presentation, Callan paints a picture of a busy guy.

One problem many geologists faced this month was that they can't share their current research because of industrial demands. The Lost Geologist decided to instead share potential research passions.

After a few visits to the volcanoes of Guatemala, Jess over at Magma Cum Laude shares her current work on the long road to become Dr. Volcano, by creating maps and learning the tools necessary for studying samples taken from the mountain. Good luck Jess.

Another geology teacher is Garry over at Geotripper. His post is about not falling through the cracks. This is a common teacher-ism but can also be used by geologists and by actors in certain end of the world movies.

This question seemed to open up some deep thoughts among the geoblogosphere. We have already seen that everyone is busy working on a variety of projects. But some posts have gone beyond the current project list and started looking at their online work as geobloggers. Ron Schott at the geology home companion blog, who was the very first geo blog I ever read writes about where blogging has taken him and where he would like it to go. In his own words, an introspective blog post.

If you want to read about earthquake dynamics, take a look at Julian's research over at Harmonic Tremors . Like others, he is working on a PhD and starting down that long slippery slope. Good luck Julian.

Poor David at Cryology and Co. has to work in Alps as a field area. His current work looks at the formation age of rock glaciers. He discusses some of the issues when trying to date when the rock and ice started behaving as a glacier.

The Riparian Rap blog discusses the Little River Research and Design company. Steve's comments concern not only the issues of a small company in the current economic climate, but also the new ideas in creating river modeling systems. I know my students enjoyed even the simplest of stream tables.

Chris at Highly Allochthonous discusses the ideas of a snowball earth while studying in Oman. Not only is the post good, but the comments are also worth reading. I think it has something to do with who reads science blogs, compared to the comments on my blog which are usually just long strings of Chinese characters.

Sediment grains are the star attraction at Research at a Snail's Pace. Pascal is looking at how individual grains interact with each other.

Another geologist in the private sector, Brian at Clastic Detritus reminds us that he does not blog about his for-pay-work, but does discuss his published research and everything that is turbidite related.

The depth and breadth of the different research areas discussed here is amazing. The Lab Lemming's research is in a totally different area than everyone else. He explains that the subject of his study is a few orders of magnitude larger than his usual subjects, zircons. The subject's name is LLL-Y and the pictures are worth the visit to this site.

On-The-Rocks at geosciblog is another geo-scientist with a full plate, including retyping a thesis from the 1980's when electric typewriters were all the rage. Good luck with that project!

As for myself, I am still working with teachers to help them share geology with their little kids. Next week is a field session in the canyons of Utah where I will examine friction coefficient between my mountain bike and several different sand stone varieties. Later in the month I will be with National Geographic again with their new geology curriculum which will be rolled out this fall. I hope everyone enjoyed The Accretionary Wedge #23

New Accretionary Wedge

I think this will be AW #23.

Not everything I am studying ends up in a published paper, well actually nothing I study ends up in a published paper. Sometimes my HS students hear about my adventures and sometimes I write a blog post, but mostly it is just for me.

This AW is to share your latest discovery with all of us. Please let us in on your thoughts about your current work. What you are finding, what you are looking for. Any problems? Anything working out well?

Lets try to get everything in by March 26. I will be out (mountain biking in the field) for the 1st half of April and I want to get this done before I head out.