Course Projects
Geo 116 - California Rocks!
If you are taking this course for a LETTER GRADE or CREDIT/NO CREDIT (or if you haven't yet decided), please read the following:
You should begin thinking about the project you will need to complete by the end of this course. I am open to all of your suggestions for a project if you have particular interests - please see me individually for "approval" of your project.
Some project guidelines:
Required of all projects:
All project topics must be relevant to California geology. You may include information about geology from other parts of the world as illustrations or analogs of California geology, but your focus should be in California. I encourage you to choose some aspect of geology that is special to you - the geology of where you live, the geology of a place you will visit or have visited before, the geology of an earthquake you've felt or perhaps simply some geological feature you've always wondered about and want to investigate....
All projects should include a written summary of your topic (there is no specific page requirement, but the written portion of your project report should be about 5-10 pages, double-spaced, not including figures). This report should be similar to a scientific paper with a title, introduction and background, body of the report, conclusions or brief summary, and references used. You should include any drawing, photos, or other figures that illustrate your points or that document what you learned in the field.
Dependent on project topic:
Your project should include some (but not necessarily all) of the following features:
•
Reading two or three scientific papers on your topic of interest,•
Interpretation of a portion of a topographic map and the corresponding aerial photographs (all maps/some photos available in the Branner library in the Mitchell Earth Sciences building on campus or at the U.S. Geolocial Survey in Menlo Park),•
Location, description, and interpretation of rocks you've collected from the field,•
Self-guided field trip (some field trip guides are available in the library - I have others to lend out),•
Web-based research on specific topics,•
Photographic documentation of your field trip (including interpretation and description of these photos), etc.For example, some have asked whether the project might be based on the geology of a hike/trip they will take. This is OK too - you will need to read a scientific paper or two about the area before you go, map your hike/walk on a topographic map, collect rock samples and/or take photographs of the geology, locate sampling sites on the topographic map, identify and describe any rocks you collect, and write a summary of the geology, what you saw, etc.
Please ask for help if you're not sure about your project - this is supposed to be fun and I hope that you will incorporate several different geological/scientific tools in your project.