Final grades are no longer posted due to regulations. Contact me individually and I will be happy to pass on the information. Have a good summer.
Teaching Assistants: Lisa Crowder crowder@magic.ucsb.edu and Molly Trecker trecker@magic.ucsb.edu.
Office hours:
Lecture: M W F 11:00 - 11:50, Buchanan Hall Rm 1920. Lecture attendance is not mandatory but questions will be posed and discussed during some lectures and you will recieve 1 point for each completed answer sheet submitted during lecture (maximum 20 points).
Website: Most class materials are posted on our website http://www.geol.ucsb.edu/~hacker/geo2/.
Laboratory Sections: Every student must attend his/her registered laboratory section every week and complete all assigned work. Prelab exercises are due at the beginning of each lab section. You will not be allowed into the lab without your completed prelab exercise. Pre-labs are available at the Geology 2 website. First lab section meetings are April 8-11.
Exams: Midterm exams: Monday, April 21, and Monday, May 12, 11-11:50 A.M. Final Exam: Wednesday June 11, 12 noon-3 P.M.
Textbook: Essentials of Geology by Chernicoff, 411 pages, Worth Publishers, 1997.
Geology by Chernicoff, 583 pages, Worth Publishers, 1995 is a longer version of the same material.
Other course materials: Required laboratory materials and lecture notes will be handed out in lab and lecture. Scantron sheets will be handed out for exams. To reduce duplication/material costs that we used to charge every student--and to save trees--most class materials will be posted at the Geology 2 website. Roadside Geology books and Geology of National Parks book, on sale in the bookstore, are optional. They are useful for writing the term paper and fun to have when traveling around California or visiting the national parks.
Optional Field Trips: You may earn extra credit by participating in extra field trips. The Geology 18 field trip to Death Valley on Thurs-Sun May 7-11 will earn you 10 points extra credit for Geology 2 plus 1 unit of P/NP credit for Geology 18. The Geology 19 field trip to Yosemite on May 1-4 will earn you 10 points extra credit for Geology 2 plus 1 unit of P/NP credit for Geology 19. Weekend day trips to Santa Ynez Mts on Sat May 10, Sun May 11, Sat Nov May 17, or Sun May 18 earn you 5 extra points, plus they replace the shorter field trip scheduled during the final lab week).
Optional Rock Hunt: You may earn 5 points extra credit by completing the Webb Hall Rock Hunt. May be done independently and handed in before May 19, or may be done and handed in during a guided tour with T.A.s during lecture hour on May 19.
Semi-optional Term Paper/Web Page: Short (4-5 pages of text) web page about geological resources on the internet or research paper on the geology of an area familiar to you, for extra credit of 15-20 points. A term paper/web page is required in order to earn an A or A+ course grade and is required for all honors students (2H). It is not required to pass the course. Due Wednesday, June 2, 11:00 AM. No late papers accepted.
Honors/Enrichment Section: Interested students will meet with Prof. Hacker one additional hour per week for supplementary activities. Geology 2H students must attend these sessions and must write and present a term paper/web page.
Final Grade: Letter grades will be assigned according to total points earned. Maximum points: Midterm Exam #1: 60 points. Midterm Exam #2: 60 points. Final Exam: 120 points. Laboratory: 90 points.* Lecture discussion questions: 20 points. Possible extra credit points: rock hunt: 5 points, field trips: 10 points, term paper/web page: 20 points.
*Any student who does not attend laboratory sections and complete satisfactory work therein will receive an F for the entire course, regardless of other work completed.
Philosophy and Purpose (borrowed from Larry McKenna)
The purpose of this class is two-fold. One is to teach you about studying the cosmos, atmosphere, rocks, and fossils to illuminate the physical, chemical and biological processes by which the Earth has formed. The principal requirement for this study is common sense and an inquiring mind. An ability to memorize mountains of material is neither required nor helpful.
The second purpose is to foster in you an interest in science in general and geology in particular. This purpose is facilitated by active questioning and polite insistence on your part. There are two types of questions: one type asks for clarification, the other for amplification. Both are valuable, and both are solicited. If you don't understand something, ask! I emphasize that all questions are invited: just raise your hand, wait until I acknowledge you, and ask. You are also encouraged to ask about the implications of the lecture topics. This type of question often leads to interesting discussions and discoveries, and reinforces the material being discussed. If you can ask questions of me, so too can I of you. You may be gently "invited" to participate in class discussions. Please come prepared for class. This means reading the readings BEFORE class meets, not after. Also, it seems that we lack a forum for the discussion of interesting discoveries in the sciences. So, if some scientific event catches your interest and you need some additional explanation, go ahead and ask me, either during or outside of class. If I don't know the answer, chances are someone in the class will. Catch me before class if you have questions, come to office hours, or use my e-mail address: hacker@magic.ucsb.edu.
Etiquette
There are four rules which I insist be followed in my classes:
* you must attend one of these field trips
Sections
First lab section meetings are April 8-11.
Tuesday 9:00 - 10:50 (TA: Lisa Crowder)
Thursday 8:00 - 9:50 (TA: Lisa Crowder)
Thursday 10:00 - 11:50 (TA: Lisa Crowder)
Thursday 12:00 - 1:50 (TA: Molly Trecker)
Friday 9:00 - 10:5 (TA: Molly Trecker)
Friday 1:00 - 2:5 (TA: Molly Trecker)
First sections meet Tuesday, April 8. All labs meet in PSB-S room 2724.
Teaching Assistants
* Lab #9 may be replaced (for 5 points extra credit) by participating in a one day weekend field trip. Trips are tentatively planned for May 10, 11, 17, and 18. Sign up lists for these trips will be available in lecture.
Lab Rules
Every student must attend his/her registered laboratory section every week and complete all assigned work.
Prelab exercises are due at the beginning of each lab section. You will not be allowed into the lab without your completed prelab exercise. Bring your completed prelab exercise for Lab #1 to your first lab meeting. Pre-labs are available at the Geology 2 website.
(1) Your kind T.A.'s will drop your lowest lab score (prelab + lab). Laboratory is an important part in science, and therefore, if you miss more than one lab you will fail the entire course.
(2) You must complete the prelab exercise before your scheduled lab time. They will be collected at the beginning of the lab: consider this your ticket to the lab fun of the day.
(3) Most of the labs will be held in the lab room (Physical Sciences Building South) except the Beach Walk (#4) and the Old San Marcos Pass field trip (#9).
Week of Apr 7-11:
Prelab #1 Minerals
Week of Apr 14-18: Prelab #2 Sedimentary Rocks
Week of Apr 21-25: Prelab #3 Groundwater
Week of Apr 28- May 2: Prelab #4 Beachwalk
Week of May 5-9: Prelab #5 Structural Geology
Week of May 12-16: Prelab #6 Geologic and Topo Maps
Week of May 19-23: Prelab #7 Igneous/Metamorphic Rocks
Week of May 26-30: Prelab #8 Plate Tectonics
Week of Jun 2-6: Prelab #9 Old San Marcos Pass field trip*
Optional Field Trips
You may earn extra credit by participating in extra field trips. The Geology 18 field trip to Death Valley on Thurs-Sun May 7-11 will earn you 10 points extra credit for Geology 2 plus 1 unit of P/NP credit for Geology 18. The Geology 19 field trip to Yosemite on May 1-4 will earn you 10 points extra credit for Geology 2 plus 1 unit of P/NP credit for Geology 19. Weekend day trips to Santa Ynez Mts on Sat May 10, Sun May 11, Sat Nov May 17, or Sun May 18 earn you 5 extra points, plus they replace the shorter field trip scheduled during the final lab week).
Geology 18: Geology of Death Valley
May 7-11
Natural Bridge Canyon
Badwater and Dante's View
Titus Canyon
Rhyolite Ghost Town
Mosaic Canyon
Devil's Golf Course
Stovepipe Wells Sand Dunes
Panamint Valley
Desert Pupfish
Zabriskie Point
Open to all interested students.
One unit of P/NP credit
Cost: $65 for transportation, about $25 for food.
Required meetings:
M Apr 28 5 PM Webb 1100
M May 5 5 PM Webb 1100
For more information, contact Lori Okamura (893-4831) or stop by the Geology Department office.
Geology 19: Geology of Yosemite
May 1-4
Open to fifteeen Geology 2 students who sign up before Friday April 4.
One unit of P/NP credit
Cost: ?
Required meetings:
For more information, contact Lori Okamura (893-4831) or stop by the Geology Department office.
Option I: (You will have to be somewhat computer literate to complete this task, including knowing how to access the internet, how to write simple hypertext markup language (HTML), and how to send electronic mail.) Create a web page or pages about some aspect of earth science. Your objective is to explore the world wide web for information on any aspect of earth science that interests you and then create a web page that provides links and explanations to the sites that contain that information. First, think of an aspect of geology you would like to learn more about. You might scan the figures in the class textbook to see what piques your interest. Write down your questions or things you would like to learn about this subject. Next, on the computer, open Netscape Navigator or another web browser. Use a search engine (e.g., Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot) to look for links about your subject. For example, you could search for "seismic" and "risk" if you are interested in finding out whether your house is safe from earthquakes. Explore sites and follow links until you find information that interests you. Be persistent; you may have to many sites before you find what you need. Sites at Universities or government agencies, such as NASA, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and NOAA are also good places to start. If you can't find enough information about your subject, choose a new one and try again. You can try some of these links for a start:
http://www-socal.wr.usgs.gov/usgs-pas.html
http://earth.agu.org/kosmos/homepage.html
http://www.geosociety.org/
http://www.geol.ucsb.edu/geology/geology.html
Then, create a web page that includes:
Credit: A term paper or web page is required for A and A+ students and for honors (2H) students.
For other students it is optional but worth enough points to make a difference. All web pages that are researched and created following the above instructions will earn 15-20 points of extra credit.
Due date: E-mail is due at 11 AM (the beginning of lecture) on Monday, June 2.
No late e-mail will be accepted.
Option II: Write a short research paper (4-5 pages of text) about the geology of an area familiar to you.
The area you write about can be where you have lived or one that you visited and particularly enjoyed. Your area can be as small as a neighborhood or as large as a county.
Library Research: Start by doing some reading in the library. You can start with a textbook but you must also read some materials that are more specific for your area. Some suggested references and their locations in the library are listed on the back. Read at least three different sources, at least two non-textbook.
Content: In order to get credit, your paper must include the following:
(Print this form and fill it out.)
Name:
Lab Section:
We have collected a number of rocks from California for you to study and interpret. When you take this tour, you will want to have some pencils, a clipboard or other hard surface to write on, and your textbook for reference.
1. Begin at the west entrance of Webb Hall (on the side toward the library with the "this is no longer an entrance" sign). Examine the big rock on the north (mountain) side of the steps. Which grain size categories are represented in this rock (silt, sand, pebble, boulder, etc.)?
Is this rock well-sorted or poorly sorted? Explain.
Are the clasts mainly angular, sub-angular, sub-rounded, rounded?
Which of the three main rock classes (igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic) are represented in this rock?
Give the entire rock a name, which includes a term for texture and a term for the grain size.
Behind the tree trunk north of the rock is a flat, nearly buried slab of schist. It is a common rock in many parts of southern California, especially the San Gabriel Mountains, Catalina Island, Mojave Desert and Salton Sea areas. Notice that the boulder has chunks of rock that look similar to the big slab.
2. On the other side of the steps (ocean side) are two interesting boulders. The one with black crystals is called anorthosite and is 1.6 billion years old. The other rock was collected from Old San Marcos Pass Road in the Santa Ynez Mountains and is 50 million years old. What do you think the white spoon-shaped bodies are in the other rock? (Hint: you may have eaten their modern representatives in a seafood restaurant.) What does the rock and its spoon-shaped bodies tell you about environment of deposition of this rock?
3. Continue south along the sidewalk toward Biological Sciences until you get to the entrance to the patio. A large, almond-shaped boulder is on the left just before the entrance to the patio. This rock was found imbedded in the volcanic ash of a young cinder cone in the Mojave Desert. How did it get its shape?
What are the little holes called and where did they come from?
4. Just outside the left side (mountain side) of the patio entrance is a flat black-and-white rock with white stripes across it. This rock comes from the Cascade Mountains in Washington and is one of two main rock types there. The other forms the major scenic peaks like Mt. Rainier.
What kind of structure is the white stripe that cuts across at an angle?
Does the black part of the rock have a random or organized fabric?
If organized, is it planar or linear?
Would you call it bedding or foliation?
Which of the three main rock classes are represented by this rock?
5. Stroll into the patio and look at the several different kinds of rocks there. Look especially at a big white boulder in the center of the mountain end of the patio. It comes from the central Sierra Nevada. Notice the grain size. Is this a fine-grained or coarse-grained rock?
What are the big white match-box shaped bodies?
How many other minerals can you identify?
Can you give a general name to the rock?
How do you think it formed?
6. Walk out the south end of the patio until you get to the concrete ramp on the left, notice the pinkish gray rock on the left side of the ramp. It erupted from a caldera where Lake Crowley is today between Bishop and Mammoth. Describe this rock (color, grain size, clasts)
Name this rock (hint: we saw it in lab)
7. Now go up the ramp toward the south entrance of the geology building. As you go up the ramp, a large, rectangular-shaped boulder is on the right side of the ramp underneath the wheelchair symbol, and it has a Z-shaped structure in it. Any idea what the Z-structure is?
What does it tell you about the geologic history of this rock which, incidentally, was collected from metamorphosed sedimentary rocks of the Sierra Nevada foothills?
8. Continue around the Geology Building. Just before you enter the small loading-dock parking lot, you will encounter two big white and pale blue boulders under the bushes. The pale bluish green mineral is kyanite. Any idea what the white (actually rather glassy) mineral is?
The rocks come from the Cargo Muchacho Mountains in SE California. Knowing that the bluish green mineral is kyanite, are these rocks igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary?
And what does the presence of kyanite tell you about how these rocks formed?
9. Go across the parking lot to a rock and cactus garden. At the left half of the garden near the curb is a brown beach-ball size boulder with cross-sections of snail shells in it. It comes from the southern San Joaquin Valley and is of Eocene age. The shells are marine and tell you that southern San Joaquin Valley was under the sea 50 m.y. ago. About 10 feet to the left and in a little terrace wall behind a bush in the garden is a lavender
brown boulder with greenish white spots. This rock comes from the Inyo Mountains just east of Lone Pine and erupted about 180 m.y. ago. Look carefully at the white spots and notice that most are rectangular. Can you give these white structures a name?
A mineral name?
A name for the entire rock?
Look at the rounded boulder to the right of the spotted rock. Rockhounds call it a "puddingstone". The shapes of the individual clasts are
so the geological name for this rock is
The boulder to the right of the puddingstone is a pegmatite from San Diego County. The big black crystals are tourmaline.
The next boulder is a stretched pebble conglomerate from the Panamint Mountains near Death Valley. The pebbles (mostly quartzite) are flattened by recrystallization and plastic flow. The black matrix is composed of quartz and mica; what kind of mica?
What kind of rock is it (hint: why is it NOT a sedimentary rock)?
Thirteen steps to the right along the curb (just before you leave the small parking lot and enther the road, still in the rock and cactus garden, and at the end of the red-painted curb) are four large boulders lined up under a tree. One is white with big black crystals, the second is brown-red with a myriad of small garnet crystals, the third has small black and white crystals, and the last is white with white crystals. What type of rock is each?
How do you know?
10. At the southeast corner of the Geology building just before the yellow fire hydrant is another small rock and cactus garden. The small red pebbles are volcanic cinders from a cinder cone near Little Lake, and most of the other rocks are volcanic bombs and welded tuff (like you saw in lab). Describe how the volcanic cinders, bombs and welded tuffs are different (you can use color, degree of weathering, vesicularity, etc.)
11. Walk past the fire hydrant around the Preston Cloud Laboratory. Read the plaque at the main entrance. Here is where we study ancient and lunar rocks seeking to find traces of life in the form of tiny, primitive fossils. If fossils did not begin to form preservable hard parts (shells, bones) until the Cambrian, what kinds of critters do you think the investigators might find in rocks older than Cambrian?
12. Left of the lamppost at the northeast corner of the Preston Cloud Laboratory you will find a big white and gray boulder with irregular brown splotches. It is a marble collected from Panamint Valley. What kind of rock was it initially?
13. Turn left around the Preston Cloud Laboratory and walk toward the north entrance of the geology building. Look at the 6 rock pillars at the NW corner of the Cloud Lab. The pillars are andesite columns formed in some of the lava flows that long ago blocked the Truckee River Canyon. How many sides do they have?
How were these columns formed?
14. Next to the sidewalk between the Cloud Lab and the Geology building is a large glassy black boulder which we collected from the south end of the Salton Sea. It is representative of rock found where the northernmost end of the East Pacific Rise is cracking continentward into North America. Give this rock a name.
15. A little farther along at the north entrance to the Geology Building, you will find two large boulders, one on each side of the stairway. The big light gray one on the Preston Cloud Lab side is a volcanic rock from the Mono Craters in California. If mafic volcanic rocks are black, what is the name for this type of volcanic rock?
See the holes in it? What are they called?
How did the holes form?
16. The rock in the bushes on the library side of the entrance has a contact between rocks similar to others you have seen earlier in this tour. Look at each closely, paying particular attention to grain size, shape, texture. Name the rocks and give a likely place in the earth where they formed. If rock collecting in National Parks were permissible, where would you go to get such a rock?
17. Now go along the north side of the geology building toward the library. Next to the sidewalk, left of the main entrance of the GS 1100 lecture hall, are two black rocks. The glassy rock on the left was collected with the gray volcanic rock you saw at station 15, and they are compositionally identical. Why do they look so different?
Name this rock.
The rock on the right has the same origin, but it is the same as or related to several rocks you saw earlier in the tour. Can you name this rock?
In summary, these two black volcanic rocks have the same origin, but completely different textures.
18. Now walk about twelve steps northwest, toward Cheadle Hall, to the near end of the wooden bench.
Here is a white rock with irregularly shaped black bodies in it. Give a name to the white rock.
Draw a quick sketch of the black bodies in the white groundmass
Which is older, the white or the black? (hint: the younger rock cuts into the older)
19. Follow the bench around to its other end, then walk diagonally left to the intersection with the main sidewalk. At the intersection is a black boulder with white and tan stretched pebbles. What kind of rock is this? (igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary).
What is its rock name?
20. Go back, east, along the Geology building to the wheelchair ramp into the building. On the right side of the ramp, as you walk up it, is a brown and gray boulder of Cambrian age from the Inyo Mountains of Eastern California. Look at the curly structures of the vertical face of the boulder. What are these structures called and how did they get like that?
(draw a picture if it helps to explain)
How is it possible for the Earth to affect rocks so drastically when it would be virtually impossible for you and me to take a strong and rigid, originally horizontal layered rock and do the same thing?
21. Go on up the ramp and enter the building. In the space below, copy the squiggle that an earthquake has made on the drum or in a record of an earlier earthquake. Which direction records the amount of shaking and which direction records the time elapsed?
22. Near the Seismographic Station the geologic map of California split into 2 halves. What do the different color patches depict?
What color is beneath the UCSB campus?
Beneath Monterey?
If you grew up in California, find your town on the map. What color is beneath your town?