Geoscience Education in the Mountain State:
CATS Geology Telecourse, Fall 1998,
Show 1 Transcript

CATS Telecourse Broadcast
Geology 290
September 10, 1998

From the National Research Center for Coal and Energy in Morgantown, this is CATS Geology 290, September 10, 1998.

Dr. Bob: Greetings everyone! Bob Behling with Deb Hemler and others which you'll soon meet. We're here in Morgantown to begin a session this fall on CATS Geology. And as a general introduction, it's been a great day for a field trip up here--and I've been stuck in this studio. Other than that, it really has been absolutely gorgeous and I wish I could be out with each and every one of you looking at the rocks in your area. But we haven't been able to do that. We'll try to do the next best thing as the darkness settles in. First, however, we'll do a more formal introduction to the course and I'll turn it over to Phyllis Barnhart. Phyllis?

Phyllis: Good evening everyone and welcome to CATS Connections. Project CATS, as you know, stands for "Coordinated and Thematic Science." It is an NSF National Science Foundation Teacher Enhancement Project that is now entering its fourth year. We're focusing now on content enhancement as well as the pedagogy and various sciences in the classroom. Project CATS, funded by the NSF, is a cooperative arrangement with the West Virginia Department of Education, the University and State College system of West Virginia, and the West Virginia Science Teachers Association. CATS Earth Science Connections, the Distance Education Workshop and Telecourse, was developed by an exemplary team of West Virginia teachers of science. It has a unique format and we hope it is one that will work for you. The outstanding on-air team includes Dr. Robert Behling, WVU professor for geology (better known as Dr. Bob), and Dr. Debra Hemler, who is also with the CATS Program and is a professor of science education at WVU. We also have Tom Repine, Education Specialist with the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. At this time I would like to give a very special thank you to West Virginia University for being a partner in the CATS Earth Science Connections Telecourses. I'd also like to thank the West Virginia Geological Survey for their contributions to Project CATS and for the forerunner to Project CATS, RockCamp. The in-kind contribution that comes from the Survey is without a doubt a major contribution to our project. And again, I'd like to thank the Survey for that. At this time I'm going to turn it over to Brenda West, who is the Program Coordinator for Project CATS and liaison to the Earth Science Connections Group.

Brenda: Thank you Phyllis. I'll be the contact for Project CATS at the West Virginia Department of Education and for this class. And first of all, I'd like to thank the development team--they've worked hard to provide a format that will meet the needs of the teachers who want to enhance their content knowledge. If you need to reach me, you can do so by calling 304-558-7805, or e-mail at bwest@access.k12.wv.us. The five on-air sessions that you'll be hearing will provide you with some great content knowledge and interesting information. The Saturday explorations will provide exciting opportunities for applying that content knowledge. So my wish for you is to have a rewarding learning experience and a fun-filled time in taking this class. And I'm going to turn it back to Phyllis.

Phyllis: And this is called passing off again. And we'll send it back up to Dr. Bob.

Dr. Bob: OK. Thank you very much Phyllis and Brenda. Of course all this is predicated on the expectation that there are people out there watching us and that the only downlink site is not a pod of whales off of Baja California wondering what this program is all about. What we have tried to do is set up quite a sequence of locations so that the downlink sites allow you to travel a minimum distance. Although we call the course Geology 290, we will, from time to time, be talking about earth science in general. But geology is the way in which it is listed in the catalog, and the enrollment and registration is done that way. And, one of the other things that we do is we're constantly trying to plan ahead. Deb, what are some of the other things besides the show that we have to offer?

Deb: You have to be aware of the fact that Earth Revealed is an integral part of this program. You should tape them off of PBS during their broadcasts and view them in between our live broadcasts. We'll be broadcasting every third week. So, in between that you're to watch the Earth Revealed sessions. Another component will be our Saturday Exploratories in which Dr. Bob, myself, and Tom Repine will circulate among the sites to offer you a different aspect of earth science education. We'll focus on field trips, we'll focus on a variety of classroom applications, etc. Then you'll get a "Best of Dr. Bob" tape at the end of the course where you'll see Dr. Bob out in the field doing what he does best.

Dr. Bob: Our production values are really great! You've seen already we have two cameras and we've had microphones and there was a microphone out front. This is really a marvelous facility. We're here in the NRCCE building and it is a great opportunity to use this as an uplink site. At your sites you should already have in your possession a compendium of information. This particular volume includes the information from all of the Earth Revealed series. There are half-hour programs that are wedded together for one-hour presentations. The good news about that is that it is a very formal series that has been done a number of years ago and it is rather professionally done. The difficult aspect of this is the first several showings began before we met. But, never to fear! We will give you information as to how to pick up those shows a bit later in the broadcast. It is being shown again and you'll have plenty of time to then step into the consecutive week programming of the Earth Revealed telecourse series and to pick up the first two weeks of the telecourse series.

You will find in this compendium a teachers guide. It gives you basically a minute by minute--or in packages would perhaps be the better way to state it--the details of what is going on, interviews, animation. In this publication we have in boldface the key words. Those will assist you in your studying. You can cross-reference that information in the sense of studying with the textbook. The specific textbook is titled as is the series, "Earth Revealed," and it talks to the discussion of physical geology. There is included in it a free tectonics CD-ROM. But we'll get to that later in the semester. The authors are Plummer and McGeary, or in this case, McGeary and Plummer. They have a series of books and they alternate the first and second authorship on their publications. We're going to try to get it delivered directly to each of the participants, rather than to your sites. So we will try to get this sent to you. We have your addresses, we have some of the people here in the audience here in Morgantown, and we'll work with them individually. But the others we'll try to get that publication to them at their homes through the mail.

As a meeting on television, as Deb has said, it's every third week. You have in your package the dates that we meet together on the television live. Since it is live television as I always say, there are glitches. We tape each of our sessions. It does happen that from time to time there are problems either uplink, or communicating, or downlink--things happen. Hurricanes might come along! In which case we'll study that, you see! But never fear. We hope to not inconvenience you at any time during this semester. When problems hit, we will continue the live show in the studio, tape it and distribute that out to the sites immediately. Further, we will have the transcript of each week's live information posted on the web site. And in order to give you some more information about all of that let me turn it over to Tom Repine to share with you some more aspects of the audio portion, those transcripts, the satellite site, and some of the additional work like pre-tests and questions. Tom?

Tom: Hi there. I couldn't find the camera. As you can tell I have a lot of papers in front of me here--we'll try to keep track of things. First thing I need to address is, the facilitators at the sites, if you would please make sure that you have the paperwork for your participants. That would include a syllabus for the course, the pre-test and the initial participant survey. Make sure those are completed and sent back in to Phyllis directly. You're provided with a self-addressed envelope for that.

Some other things we need to know: We may have some participants out there at sites that we quite honestly are unaware of. So if you are out there in a site, or if you're watching someplace by yourself, we need to know your name and your address and where you are, what level of participation you'd like to take in the course. And if you have any questions from any of the sites, any of the participants, please feel free to call me at the Survey. The number is 1-800-WV-GEOLOgy. It's a toll-free number. So if you ever have a question you can call and get a hold of me that way.

Some other things we need to talk about also. If you have a question this evening and you want to call in at any time, the telephone number you need to remember to call here tonight is 1-800-233-3638. The code is 2287. When you call in during the first hour or so, you probably will not be heard live on the set. The calls will be taken in the control room. Sometime after the break, I will be in the control room myself taking calls. So I encourage you to call in either if you have a problem out there or to call in if you have a question about the content that's being offered or some part of the scheduling. We can maybe resolve those things this evening. If you have trouble, call 1-888-540-LINK. And that once again is an 800 toll-free number, so if you're having trouble out there on the audio bridge, try that number and see if they can help you out. So that will get you in touch with us as far as telephone calls and discussions.

Probably the one question a lot of people have is what's happening on Saturday? And what are the Saturday Exploratories all about. Saturday Exploratories are on September 12, which is this Saturday. They're from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Bring a bag lunch. Those of you who have been through various programs, various geology courses, or who have been to RockCamp, if you have a hand lens or an acid bottle, please bring that along.

Now the locations, and this is what everybody seems to have questions about:

One site will be Braxton Middle School in Flatwoods. The other site will be the West Virginia Geological Survey headquarters located here in Morgantown. And the third site will be Wheeling Park High School in Wheeling. Now once you decide which of these sites you would like to report to, we encourage you to report to the same site every Saturday. So on September 12, October 10, November 7, if you're going to report to the Braxton Middle School, we encourage you to report to that one all the time. The instructors, Dr. Bob, Deb, and I, will be on kind of a merry-go-round, or carousel. We will be visiting different sites at different times. So for example, this Saturday Dr. Bob will be at Braxton County. Dr. Bob is going to have a topic on "Geology in Your Backyard." Basically what he is going to do is, "How do you plan a field trip? What's available in your backyard for a field trip, something that we often overlook because we always think field trips need to be very planned and orderly and very expensive. Sometimes they need to be and sometimes they do not need to be. Another topic Dr. Bob will cover is, "What field trip is lurking near you?" Sometimes out your back door is the best thing. Then you're actually going to get to go on a field trip with Dr. Bob. And as Deb said, this is when the fun starts.

Deb will be at the West Virginia Geological Survey headquarters here in Morgantown. She will be dealing with "Geology in the Classroom." This is more of an activity-oriented type presentation where she will be guiding you and running you through some activities, also some pedagogical ideas on how to incorporate some of the things you'll be getting from this course into typical classroom situations. We'd like to remind you that even though you'll be doing activities, it's up to you as the individual participant to modify these for your own classroom use.

I will be at the Wheeling Park High School. My topic will be "Geology as a Profession." Often times when we do these courses we have a tendency to overlook how people become geologists, why they become geologists, and what encouraged them to go into that field of study. We will also talk about some of the West Virginia mineral resources, and RockCamp in case there's any questions about that, and some familiarization with some inexpensive field equipment that you could use in your own classroom situations. Probably the most important part will be interpreting topographic and geologic maps.

At the beginning of each show, we will have about a half-hour or 40 minutes in which everybody will be doing the same thing. What we will be doing for the first-half hour or 40 minutes are some basic things that we all need to get a handle on. For example: What's a field notebook? How do you use it? How can you make one for your students? How can your students make one? What are the basics of sedimentary rocks? (Hint: that may be one of the most common in the state.) What are topographic maps? Just a generality. Geologic maps--how do you interpret these patterns on these things? For example, the colors mean things. They have certain relationships to each other. And then maintain an implementation notebook.

The implementation notebook is really an idea journal. What we would like you to do is record in the implementation notebook things that you think are applicable to your particular classroom situation. Every Saturday you will have this notebook and be recording ideas. Some people call these things journals, some people call them notebooks. They go by various names. But what we're after is your ideas of how you would incorporate what you are experiencing into your classroom and use with your students. We will dedicate some time during Saturday to talk in a group about what you've written down and we hope you share your ideas with others. This is an important part because we would like to see how the ideas are being taken by you, and how you are mentally reorganizing these things for your own use.

One last thing. We already gave you the number to call in this evening. If I could ask Deb to click on the bookmark there and we'll go to the computer screen. This is the homepage for the West Virginia Geological Survey. This is also the homepage for the CATS telecourse. The address is http://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu. Click on Geoscience Education Introductory page, then scroll down and click on Fall 1998. This site will be modified periodically as more information becomes available. Probably the most important part of this will be the transcripts from the weekly broadcasts. They will be typed up and put on the web site. So at anytime if you can access this web site you can get a copy of the transcript of discussion that occurred during these two-hour broadcasts. And all five transcripts will be up there for the entire semester. Thus, at any point in time you have a very good review mechanism to pick up on something you may have missed. That's about all I have for now.

Dr. Bob: Saturday, will people have to bring their own field books or implementation notebooks or will they be provided?

Tom: We will provide implementation notebooks. We will provide the homemade-style field notebooks. And these are kind of fun. We'll either make them or if we have some extras, we'll bring them and have them ready to go for you. But it's nothing more than a sheet of paper and some graph paper. It's something your students can make, so it's a fun thing to do. We will have some acid bottles and hand lenses and things like that. And we will have most of the other materials. What they need to bring with them would be a pencil and maybe a small notebook if they want to record some other odds and ends that we will not be recording. And some all-weather gear. 'Cause one can never tell what's going to happen out in the field. Everyday is a good day for a field trip!

Dr. Bob: Every day is a good day for a field trip. Sometimes the wet rocks better show the brilliance in color! And for footwear, wear sneakers or sturdy shoes. You don't have to have climbing shoes. We're not going to do technical climbing and this is a situation where sandals probably are not good. You may use them driving on the way up but have a pair of shoes that give you decent traction and provide you some protection, but they do not have to be climbing boots, or high-top boots, or gum boots for slogging through wetlands or anything.

Remember again that this is a carousel. What we showed on the overhead I will be doing in the three Saturday field weeks. I will be doing the same thing in each of the three sites. And I rotate. Tom will be doing his thing at each of the three sites, and Deb will be doing her activities at each of the three sites. You will obviously not have them in the same sequence. But you will have all the materials. So it is designed that you go to one site and stay with it. Now there may be, as we gather the information from this first live telecast, there some participants will say that was a long way to go. The information was great--everyone nod your heads yes. It was a great experience but it was a long way to go. We will reexamine the potential and the location of the three sites. We try to put the information together and generate these three sites based on the initial enrollments. Possibility exists that we'll stay with those three. But I just wanted you to know that we are trying to remain sensitive to your particular needs and where the bulk of the participants are within the context of the state.

Deb, what about this broadcast business? It seems pretty straightforward in one sense? Tuesdays are straightforward. But what about the additional ones?

Deb: Well, we have unfortunately a little bit of a problem because our first telecast here was after the very first broadcast of Earth Revealed. The broadcasts actually began on Tuesdays from 5 to 6 a.m. on September 1st. So you've actually missed the first series of broadcasts. But not to worry. These are going to be rebroadcast again. On Friday, September 18th from 1 to 2 p.m., shows 1 and 2 will be rebroadcast. And then again on September 25th from 1 to 2 p.m. on a Friday, shows 3 and 4 will be rebroadcast. So you can begin taping this Tuesday the regular broadcasts that are shown on Tuesday from 5 to 6 a.m. So I encourage you to set those VCRs and then of course you can watch them at your leisure.

Dr. Bob: On the overhead this demonstrates what we are talking about. In parentheses, and each participant has a copy of this, each date given is the Tuesday date. And recall again that the broadcasts on Tuesday are real early in the morning. But of course we all know who love field trips that you don't want to burn daylight. So five and six in the morning, you're just getting up and getting ready for that jog or ride around town as you prepare for the busy day, and you get your PT training in early in the morning. But you can set your recording device for these days off of PBS. It is consecutive, it does not conflict with any holidays.

I have included on this the text readings and on-air dates in the center column and, then in the far right column, the three exploratory Saturday dates. And we've also included, of course, where we'll all gather together at the WVSTA meeting at Snowshoe, October 15th through 17th. So we'll be able to chat with you and you'll be able to see us and chat with us if you haven't already seen one of us in the Exploratories. You see by the time we meet at Snowshoe, those that participated in the Exploratories will have seen two of the three cast of characters. And then the last in the series is on Tuesday, November 24th for programs 25 and 26. And then we meet together for the last time on live television December 3rd.

There are chapters to read in the text and for today, for example, you may see that I've only put down Chapter 1. It's a general introductory chapter. We will be talking about that in the second half of tonight's live broadcast. What we will do in each broadcast is meet together for about 45, 50, 55 minutes and then have a brief five- to seven-minute break. You can get up and stretch and I can get a drink of water and refurbish my voice, and we can come back for the final portion of the live TV. We will tonight try to see who of you are up on the audio bridge during that break. We can try to gather that information. In the past, we have found during the live TV show it often works best to turn down the audio unless you want to ask questions. Tonight for example if you had a question while I am doing some discussion in the second half of the show, Tom will be in the studio manning the audio link, and if you have questions you can come up and we can discuss things. Again, we will see how it works at each location. We will see the need for additional audio from time to time and at the end of the show, after the live video portion at eight o'clock, we again we will be on the audio bridge in an attempt to make contact and see if any problems had arisen during that particular session.

I do have an overhead that is only of marginal use here because you'll be seeing it again and again. But it is to demonstrate that the topics are just general fundamental topics with respect to the study of earth science. And these titles mesh moderately with the chapter titles in the text when you get that in your hand. But don't worry about that because I have coordinated the chapters that you will read in order to meld it together with these titles. And there are two shows for each of the sessions. So you can see in the first few weeks we are talking about the modern theories in geology, plate tectonics, mountain-building, some of the fundamental aspects of earth science. And of course mountain-building and plate tectonics especially relate to West Virginia.

We will consistently return to West Virginia as we bring together the CONNECTIONS between a typical earth science course and our particular needs in the classrooms in West Virginia. Realize that I'm in a classroom too. I just am working with folks a bit older then others in the K-12. And, as a matter of fact, in many cases it's been a great joy, I can tell you, to work with some of those who have been working with you in years past. Especially, I worked with the honors courses, and Deb it's a joy to meet some of those students who have worked out with our teachers throughout the state who come into the honors program.

Well, back to the overhead. We will be talking about time, minerals, and in the exploratory you will be getting a discussion of rocks and minerals very early on. Volcanism--we don't have volcanoes in West Virginia today but volcanoes were a part of our geologic past. And then moving down through topics, there are weathering and soils, something that all of our youngsters are generally aware of. We then have the details of sedimentary rocks, and then rivers, running water, erosion, deposition and landform development.

And of course in West Virginia, we have to consistently work in the context of the potential of floods. Either flash floods or floods that we have two, three, or four days to prepare for. Those who live along the Ohio River or the lower reaches of the Potomac wait in anticipation of flood waters. Yet those of us who live in the mountainous areas perhaps have no more than an emergency warning in the case of the 1985 flood event. Or the number of events that have occurred since 1985 but over a smaller area have been far more local in their extent yet no less severe. Two years ago this fall, Hurricane Fran entering from the Atlantic Ocean and struck certain areas at Dolly Sods and the highland areas in West Virginia and those reaches at lower elevations just to the east of the Dolly Sods and what we call the Allegheny Front. Then we'll move onto ground water. And aspects of deserts in windblown materials.

And on further, ground water of course is extremely important because ground water and surface waters together provide our drinking water, our water for industry, our water for agriculture in the state of West Virginia. So these are extremely important components. Glaciers and the aspects of the coastal environment. In John Denver's song, we are termed "stranger to blue water," meaning that we are no longer at a coast, and yet as we enter the final weeks of this semester, we will see that the rocks that we live on are, in great measure, the result of ocean sedimentation; that West Virginia, in the terms of 500 million years, has not been a stranger to blue water. As a matter of fact, it has been inundated many times to various depths with marine-water conditions. So we will come to share that information and therefore share it with our youngsters as we work in the K-12 realm.

And then the final week. In general, we've not been very good stewards over the past century and a half in North America. And further, we talk at times about geological hazards. But they are hazards only in the sense that we have exposed ourselves and our gross national product in building buildings, highways, and so forth. Because we have put them in harm's way. The hazards are really projects, or events rather, of geologic entities that have occurred throughout geologic time. And we have built right on top of these events, or very close to these events, and therefore we need to stand back and take a good look at this to see what we have exposed ourselves to with respect to hazards.

Well, that takes care of a quick run through that. Deb, are there some other things and aspects of the teacher's guide and also the quizzes that are connected with the telecourse series?

Deb: The Earth Revealed Teacher's Guide in the classroom which you saw earlier. Dr. Bob pointed out that there are segments or descriptors and times on the video as to where something is discussed. It's not a transcript of the video. It's a synopsis. So you're not reading the exact remarks that are being made by the geologist. But it does give you a good idea of what's being discussed at what point throughout the videos. So you can't just read the teacher's guide and then know what's exactly being said. Again, its just kind of a recap.

Dr. Bob also made the point that there are some boldface terms there that help you go into the text and to research them a little bit more. If you want to know a little more than what the video discussed, then you can use the textbook as a guide. It's a good resource. It's designed as a textbook. It's not going to follow video by video, chapter by chapter.

The other thing that we have to go along with the Earth Revealed series is a telecourse quiz book, which you'll get, that asks you a couple questions for every episode. They are general questions that may be taken either from the videos themselves or things that can be applied to West Virginia; things that you need to think about in terms of West Virginia. So some of the answers will be very obvious from the material that you watch from the video. But others you'll have to think about in reference to where you live and what we experience in geology here in West Virginia.

Dr. Bob: And when are the quizzes going to be looked at finally?

Deb: We're going to wait until the end of the semester and then take the quizzes up then. So you keep the book, you go through the Earth Revealed series. You answer the quizzes as you watch the videos, and then at the end we will collect those. So that you'll have them the whole time as a resource.

Dr. Bob: We encourage you, the participants, to photocopy your answers, so that you'll have your own copy that never leaves your domain. It will help you as you study for things. Besides, on your own copy you may wish to change and alter some things. I would point out to you that sitting down and at least sketching out the answer shortly after you have watched show number 1 and 2, the two half-hour shows, is the best way to approach this. Don't leave them go to the end.

Deb: I wouldn't recommend that.

Dr. Bob: You wouldn't recommend that. When we run major field trips, we often have questions and it's so much more fun to be talking about the ones that relate to that day's activities. And then I ask questions that start out on one day and move over to the second day, so that you bring back, you review and revisit that information.

Deb: I'd like to point out too about the videos, you're not only getting the geology out of the videos but you're also getting a wealth of other information. They focus heavily on history of the science and we're always asked to incorporate history whenever possible. And I think the video series does a very good job of that.

Also, the first video talks about the role of the geologist and what geologists do. We don't really get into that much there, usually that colored page at the back of the chapter that we occasionally have students read. But the videos is a very good overall view of what geologists do to contribute to the wealth of knowledge in geology.

The other things is that they focus a lot on the technologies that are used and the indirect ways that we measure things. Like the interior of the earth. The students always ask, well how do we know that the core is, that the outer core is liquid or the inner core is solid? How do we know that? And so this video is very good. I think it's the second one or the third one that does a very nice job of talking about indirect measures and the technologies that have been developed.

Dr. Bob: One thing you'll find in the study of geology is that unlike physics and mathematics and chemistry, and to a certain extent biology, they are engulfed in a great deal of factual information. Measurements that can be made. Now you take the pickled grasshoppers and you measure the length of the thighs and you do statistical analysis. My daughter was doing that yesterday in her advanced placement biology course! Geologists, on the other hand, are dreamers. We work with basic information that has great void spaces. As we try to build a structure, we are missing great periods of time or historic geologic records. They have been eroded. They are no longer in the same place because they have been moved by great forces over long periods of time; 200 million years gives us an opportunity to move things very slowly but very far at that very slow rate. And as a result, you'll find that geologists put together a great deal of factual or theoretical models with a precious little basic data.

So we're dramatically different then the chemist, physicists, or the mathematician. In many ways, geologists have been looked upon as sort of a soft science because we did not have all of that fundamental information. As a matter of fact, not until these past 30 to 35 years have we had a real theory to hang our hats on, so to speak, with respect to the study of the dynamic earth. That theory we will talk about in the second half of tonight's show as introducing it as plate tectonics. So the discussion in the videos help to demonstrate how we put together information in models with a very little bit of information.

Deb: Oh, and they draw in the other disciplines as well. When they talk about plate tectonics, they mention the physics behind the plates. They talk about the conversion to potential to kinetic energy. And so they do a nice job of drawing in from other disciplines.

Dr. Bob: And if you look at our catalog, for example, you would see that we have courses in geophysics, geobotany, or paleontology, the study of primarily the invertebrate and vertebrate forms of ancient life, geochemistry, water chemistry--a tremendous connecting link between the sciences. In our particular department we even do geomathematics and analytical discussion.

One of the things that I try to emphasize to young folks as they come before me is that the best way to work with unknown things is to draw a picture. In geology it's very obvious, we're forever drawing pictures. Or as I call them cartoons. We're forever doing that. And I'll ask you to draw some cartoons to explain to me what you're trying to say in a paragraph. Well, the same way in mathematics--who amongst us in algebra would not have done better if we had drawn more pictures. Try to describe in the cartoon what is it we're trying to solve for. And this is where you will find the tv section as well as the diagrams in the text to be very useful.

Another personal note with respect to the telecourse series: You will find as you watch these that there are a great number of women in the science. When I was studying earth science, I had the great pleasure and advantage of having as my first professor of geology a woman who had graduated from Rutgers with the first Ph.D. that a woman had ever received at Rutgers--and in geology. And of course early, though we're not proud of this fact, it was considered that, well, women would not be out in the field. Women would not be doing the exploration for oil and gas. The appropriate discipline or subdiscipline in geology for women would have been micropaleontology, because they could sit in a laboratory. We could bring samples to them, you see, they would work with the microscope, identify that, and be a very important, play a very important role in the search for oil and gas. And that's the way my professor was trained. But she was a vivacious redhead who loved to be out in the field. The first person off the bus was her. And there I was as a freshmen immersed in this type of situation, and I have tried to share not only the fact that the role of women scientists in geology is on par and level. We do not have the numbers, but in graduate schools now we quite often have very similar numbers of women and men doing geologic work. So the video segments are very useful in strengthening that bond, and to demonstrate that all the work has not been done by far. And we need folks in the science of geology and related fields to solve more so that women, minorities, all types of people who have a true love for the out-of-doors may well find that geology is their discipline. Geology is their interest as a career. And because it has applications to so many other things, there are some very neat ways of combining an interest in biology with geology, physics with geology.

Well, the last aspect of what I want to do in this first session is to review very quickly the fact that there are different components and folks taking this for different credits and different value. So if we could go to the overhead please, I will zoom in a bit and some folks will be taking it for CEU credits. Others will be interested in only certain segments. They are not registered--they are viewing us simply because we are on the air and available at their downlink site or even at home.

The different components include the telecourse. That is, Earth Revealed. And for all of the participants, a review of Earth Revealed and the quizzes associated would be appropriate. Then our Thursday gathering live, those who will be participating are the ones who are enrolled in two or three credits. Now with respect with enrollment, you say, oh my gosh, we've started the semester, I'm not enrolled. Not to worry. We're very flexible. We are out to accommodate you. And then, the Saturday events, those who participate in the Saturday events are the one credit and three credit. And then the best of Dr. Bob, which is another of episode of editing. I'm out in the field. And in effect the ones who will participate most in that are the one credit and three credit enrollees, but it will be available to the two credit and CEU folks.

We will additionally have for you word as to what else we will do in the future. This course is a building block for additional things. We're constantly trying again to find out what you feel you need. We have run over a number of years questionnaires as to what content you believe you need and we're trying to address that now to begin with.

The last thing, the last single item: I'd like to go back to Tom Repine and ask Tom, you mentioned RockCamp. There are a number of folks out there who do not know what RockCamp is. Could you give us a thumbnail sketch in a minute or so as to what RockCamp is and how it has affected folks in West Virginia? So I'll throw it back to you Tom.

Tom: RockCamp started in '92 with an NSF grant and help from Phyllis. The Department of Education and the West Virginia Geological Survey and WVU and Dr. Bob all came together and came up with a program where we could provide K-12 teachers in the state introductory lessons, ideas, and activities in the earth sciences. Normally NSF programs have a tendency to wither as NSF funding starts to die off, but we were very fortunate that the state legislature saw the value of the program. We are still able to influence what some teachers do out there by maintaining a high interest level with the teachers.

We still offer continuing RockCamp sessions. RockCamp I is a two-week introductory session which we run every other summer. For example, the summer of '99 we will have a session. Dr. Bob and Deb and I will be involved in that. Some other things we do to kind of give you advanced opportunities once you're involved in RockCamp are RockCamp II, our Leadership Session, where you come in and learn more about the geology of your home area. One thing that I think most teachers tell us is they really don't have time to sit down and read. What we do is basically give you a week to sit down and read and figure out the geology of your home area. You then go back and share that with your peers.

And then we have RockCamp IIIs and IVs which are becoming either infamous or famous, I'm not sure which. RockCamp III went down to North Carolina and looked at the geology down there and tried to compare it back to the geology of West Virginia. The last day we just had to see what the geology of the New River Gorge looked like from a raft, which was very interesting! And then RockCamp IV went up to New England and tried to figure out why New England has rocks like slate and marble and we have shale and limestone. Is there some sort of connection there?

I think you'll hear this word "connection" come up in RockCamp and you'll hear Dr. Bob use the word "connection" in this telecourse. And I think you need to keep that concept in the back of your minds. Well, RockCamp is a good place for you to think about going and participating if you have more interests. This course will give you a very good background in geology. And RockCamp will give you a good background and how to apply it in your classroom, and how to take some of these ideas and kind of modify them to your own needs.

Dr. Bob: Not that many weeks ago, we can tell you we took the cog railroad up Mt. Washington and just stayed in fog, and there was frost on Mt. Washington in August and it was a bit brisk.

Deb: You can't recognize anyone in the pictures.

Dr. Bob: No, in the picture its just fog. It's winter conditions without the true snowfall and the snowflakes and crystals in the air. But the cog railroad alone was worth the ride.

Deb: Even for the brakeman!

Dr. Bob: That's right! The brakeman on the cog railroad and the activities, so we followed up the trip down the New River Gorge with the cog railroad trip up Mt. Washington in RockCamp IV. So there's all these tantalizing activities we keep working on. RockCamp V will be bigger and better and RockCamp VI, and so forth. I mean there are dinosaurs out there that we need to excavate! We need to be there!

Deb: Gee, that sounds like we're going west!

Dr. Bob: There's a dinosaur with our name on it and we are going to go out and get that rascal!

I think it's time to break for about seven minutes to get up and stretch. You will want to come back armed with some of your notepaper. I will talk about the basic topics that are in Chapter 1, and introduction to the course, and some things will be rather specific. Hopefully you will have heard of some of those terms. But it will give you a view of what we're about doing during the rest of the semester. So let us break now, see you in about seven minutes.

Tom: We'd like to see if the audio bridge is up.

Dr. Bob: That's right. If the site facilitators would call in, Tom is going to repair to the studio to check on the audio bridge. If there are problems, don't worry about it. We are going to work with our coordinators. But some of them will be able to get in and at least to say hello and see if there were any problems. Again, if some of you for some reason have just come up on air, that happens, we've been there before. We know how to accommodate this. We are unhappy that it does happen from time to time but we're going to handle it. So let's take a break, come back in about seven minutes after. And I'll see you then.

(BREAK)

Dr. Bob: Well, greetings everyone. We're back and I know Tom has been talking to at least one site on the audio bridge. If you didn't get through, we will have that audio bridge at the end of the show tonight, in about a little over 50 minutes. We'll close the telecourse portion and then have the audio bridge open until folks have asked all questions they need to ask.

I'd also point out that we alluded to the fact that a year ago this fall, we also had a telecourse program under the geology title. But this is different. This is the fundamental information in introductory geology. If you had not had that or had it a long time ago in college in an undergraduate program, this is the course that qualifies for the physical geology title that so many folks would look at in the context of certification in science, and in some states, a number of states, have earth science certification. So this is the content that reflects the information that would be shared in the very fundamental beginning course.

Well, what I would like to do for this 50 minutes is share with you some basic information, working with overheads and samples to demonstrate to you in that first chapter of the text when you receive it. It is not necessary to have the text in hand. It is a introduction. But there is content here and you will see diagrams when you do get the text delivered to you that will replicate what I am showing on the overhead. If I could go to the first overhead--and most of these cartoons you do not have to replicate-- as I said, we like cartoons and this is a cartoon. It has some Holsteins out there, and a little tractor spewing out gases, I might add. The trees sending down roots, a pump getting down to an aquifer. Here we have an ocean and a municipality close by, factories again sending out particulates and gases into the atmosphere. But this particular cartoon was meant to be used with a far more complete sketch. This is not something you have to sketch. But let's just talk about it for a second.

We often talk about cycles, and this cycle speaks to the issue of the water cycle. And no doubt a number of you out there have talked about the water cycle very recently or soon will talk about the water cycle overall. The precipitation is either as snow or rain, sleet, hail. There is even moisture these days, especially in West Virginia, when you wake up in the morning because of the dew--the dew point, the point at which the air no longer can hold the moisture that was available. When that dew point is reached, at that temperature water condenses out. That's a very important way for plants to get a water resource. The condensation at night on those plants may be a principle source of moisture for some of those plants. We see it when we have these type of days when condensation forms on the cars in the morning. You pretty well know it's going to be a gorgeous day.

The precipitation then either runs off in rivers, and if it is a very heavy precipitation as we saw recently as Hurricane Bonnie and in Texas along the Texas-Mexico border, Hurricane Charlie--Charles, it was not Charlie--tremendous rainfalls. When those storms stagnate and stay in one place, the accumulation of rainfall in a 12- hour period may be a foot or more. And in Hurricane Bonnie, a tremendous number of inches of rain falling in one place because the storm is moving so very slow.

Some of this water infiltrates. It becomes part of the ground-water system. And of course, especially in West Virginia, we utilize the ground-water system in wells to pump water back out of the ground water for use for municipalities or single family dwellings.

Some of the water goes into transpiration, especially in the summertime. Why is the Blue Ridge called the Blue Ridge? Because in the summertime, there is an incredible amount of transpiration from the trees, from the leaves, and therefore there is a constant haze. It's a blue-gray haze. Throughout West Virginia in the warm summer months we get that type of haze. At this time of year, we do not have as much transpiration. The leaves are going into the dormant stage and soon will fall, and therefore we have some beautiful crisp, clear days without the transpiration.

This ground water may indeed enter into a river or lake so the flow continues in this pattern. And then of course evaporation from all water sources, from the oceans, from the lakes--you can well imagine, as we discuss later on, the fact that we build a reservoir for water in Arizona or New Mexico is accomplished by an engineering task. But the fact that evaporation may cause there to be an enormous loss of water as compared to what we are trying to save may be a real problem. In evaporation, the water vapor is then carried upwards and wind enters into it in the storms, and we see this in the context of the hurricanes. We are in hurricane season now. Thus the water cycle is an extremely important component and it will play an important role throughout our semester's discussion.

There are many ways to demonstrate the water cycle, and each text has a different way of talking about it and sharing information with you. I'd like to put this one up from a different textbook because it talks about total volumes of water. These are not something to memorize but it is interesting to note the precipitation in cubic kilometers on the earth. Not all of it is as liquid because some of it gets tied up as snow and ice. And of course, where are the greatest sinks for precipitation but Antarctica, the largest of all, Greenland, the ice cap there. When taken together, the total volume of a smaller icecaps is not great. But the accumulation and the capturing of that moisture in the icecaps is going to be a topic of climate change.

As we look at the past million to two million years, we see that there have been many times when ice has expanded over the land, and we will see cause and effect relationships in the water cycle and in sea level and in climate change. And especially in the past 15-thousand years, rather dramatic effects of the last great glaciation and the retreat of those glaciers. Today we are wrestling with this problem of potential global climate change. We will be visiting that later in the semester. And I wanted to show that the amount of runoff may not be as enormous, although 36-thousand cubic kilometers is a lot of water. Significant portions of that come off in just a very few rivers.

The overall aspect of all of this is that the processes are slow, processes are continuous. In geology we talk about things being very uniform. And if I could go to the overhead I will share with you that we talk about uniformitarianism. A big word. What it means is that the processes that are ongoing today have been present on earth for a long, long time. Now it is true that our interaction sometimes makes these a greater problem in the context of living with the changes. For example, the very first drop of rain that ever fell had dissolved gases in it and as such it was acid rain. Today however, we put more gases in the atmosphere then ought to be there so that we have exacerbated, we have made worse the problem of acid rain. The earth has moved. There have been earthquakes throughout time, volcanic activity throughout time. Not always at the same rate. So that at times we think of catastrophes. And what uniformitarianism is is that events of the past are happening today and vice versa. We often say that the present is the key to the past. Geologist therefore travel to the ends of the earth to watch the processes along the beach to collect data and watch glaciers as they move, as they grow, as they waste away, to watch rivers in flood or landslides being triggered by very heavy rainfall or by undercutting the slopes. We look at the present to interpret the past geologic history. And in a moment of whimsy, I have suggested that what is uniformitarianism is a string of catastrophes over a long period of time. Time--geologic time is punctuated by catastrophes. When are changes really brought about in a branch of the Potomac River but when it's at flood? The day-to-day process is slow. In a lifetime of day-to-day processes, we may not see much change. There is change. The trees get taller, the canopy if we look here at a branch of the Potomac. There's the water and what is happening is that, as time goes by and in our lifetimes as we are going to watch this, we would find that the canopies get taller and taller. And there is, as a result during the summer months, more and more vegetation providing more shade to the river so that this stream or river has a cooler temperature if there is a continual growth of these trees over several decades. But along comes the 1985 flood and what is at risk? The channel itself. These trees are swept away from the floodplain and as a result, the summers after 1985 see that the water temperature is higher. The canopy is gone, no longer providing shade. The ecosystem may have to adjust. The species of micro- and macroinvertebrates and vertebrates may be different because the water temperatures during the summer months, a critical time, have changed. So it is a catastrophe that creates the greatest potential change for the channel. For the morphology of the grains, it transports grains. It creates the potential for change.

Also in the context of this first chapter, I'll go again to a overhead and demonstrate the relationship of the earth's materials deep within the earth. Here we have a telescopic view down to the center of the earth. Later on in the semester when we talk about this in detail, we'll demonstrate ways in which you can create for your youngsters in class the opportunity to get a real feel for the fact that what we talk about are things way up on the crust. It is this thin skin in relative thickness where most things happen; where rocks are brittle and break; where earthquakes, landslides, and floods occur. We will talk in detail about the differences of the rock material and the different zones. In total volume, it is the mantle which is very, very important because it holds the greatest volume of all the earth's materials. And then a core. Deb earlier had talked about a liquid core. Now, is it liquid like we think of on earth? And the answer will be: no it's a liquid with respect to a certain type of energy wave moving through the earth, a seismic wave. So it probably would be better to think of this early on, although textbooks always talk about it as a liquid, the fact that it's a seismic liquid. A certain type of earthquake wave called a shear wave doesn't pass through water. And deep within the earth it doesn't pass through materials that act like liquids. The seismic liquid then absorbs the energy rather than transmitting it. And that's why we refer to it as a seismic liquid. Then we'll look for evidence why this is a solid core on the inner. And again because of the great pressure exerted on materials down there, it would tend to be solid. Then we will take this little box, this little slice of the earth's thin skin, and enhance it in size, here to the right, and talk about different types of crust.

From now on continental crust will be the capital letter "C." Oceanic crust the capital letter "O." In densities, the oceanic crust is more dense then the continental crust. So oceanic is more dense. The continental crust is made up of a variety of the rock types that you have known for a long time. Deeper within the continental crust might be igneous rock, igneous intrusive rocks. Granite for example, is shown in the diagram here. There are also metamorphic rocks making up the continental material. And the metamorphic and igneous rocks, since they occur generally down below, we call it the basement rocks. Sometimes the roof is taken off and the basement is exposed. The basement rocks are older and they are igneous intrusive rocks and metamorphic rocks. And then on top of that basement is another structure of sedimentary rocks. The sedimentary rocks are sometimes very thick. Here in West Virginia, even in the Eastern Panhandle where folks are joining us in Martinsburg, if you were to drill down in most places, specifically where they are watching, they would have to go as the rest of us would in West Virginia through thousands and thousands and thousands of feet of sediments in order to get to the basement in West Virginia. Here in Morgantown, its at least 15,000 feet. In the northern panhandle 15 to 16,000 feet. We're talking in three miles of sediments stacked on the basement, yet our good friends visiting us and joining us in Martinsburg, if they were to hop in the car and drive about a half an hour to the east, they'd find the basement rocks exposed. They'd be in the Blue Ridge. They would find that the sediments had been stripped away through at least 200-million years of erosion. A grand time of erosion.

The oceanic crust, on the other hand, is also igneous but it is extrusive. The word is basalt, the fine-grained, usually dark black igneous rock that came out on the sea floor. The stuff of which the Hawaiian volcanoes is made is basalt. We see it right at the surface. There are other volcanoes in which basalt is part of the extrusive material, but there are some other rocks that come out and that's part of learning more of the details of physical geology. The basalt may have some sediments on the surface. Now this is different then sedimentary rocks. The sediments are unconsolidated--they're not glued together. Closer to the continent, there are thicker sequences of sediments. But in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, there are no rivers to bring sediments there and yet if we drill through, get through the water and drill through the ocean floor, we'd find a thin veneer of grains. Sometimes those grains are dominated by the shells of invertebrates. Other times we find mineral-type material. Some of that mineral material has been added to the earth through meteorites. A very slow accumulation to be sure, very fine particles.

Some of the other mineral grains have been blown there, because if we watch the development of hurricanes in this hurricane time of the year, from July through November, where do most of those hurricanes begin their lives? Off the coast of Africa and they move from Africa towards the United States. Now sometimes tropical storms begin in the Gulf of Mexico. But those that begin in Africa demonstrate that the general flow of wind direction at that latitude is from the east to the west. And therefore it can bring rains of very fine particles out of the deserts and windstorms in Africa. And from the Sahara, move great distances to drop out along the way and start to create this veneer of fine, thin sediments on the floor of the Atlantic. And then, of course, some geologists have to go to the beach area and collect some of that. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it! So we go out and we collect those samples and we determine where those grains come from.

All of these details are found in the thin skin there of the lithosphere. This is the brittle rock, the rock that if it is stressed sufficiently could well break. And if it breaks under stress, whatever is on that piece rock that breaks is likely to shudder. It's an earthquake. It is stress that builds and the brittle rock breaks in response to that stress and the result is an earthquake.

Ah, the asthenosphere, a word that's quite often new to folks who have not talked about geology in some time. The asthenosphere is a zone where some of this material is at pressure melting. You say what's pressure melting? Well, I tell you that if you go ice skating, you are using pressure melting as a principal to assist you gliding over the ice. Because you put your body weight on a very thin blade so that your pressure on that skate is concentrated and at the temperature of the ice rink, that pressure is such that the melting point is no longer reached. In other words, the melting point might be depressed below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The air temperature is 31 degrees Fahrenheit, and therefore the ice melts. It melts beneath your blade and that's pressure melting. As you glide over it, if the conditions are really great, it will refreeze right soon behind you.

Have you ever heard the term that's it's too cold to snow? It may even be too cold to enjoy ice skating because the pressure melting point isn't reached and then it's just blade on ice, and it will not be quite as slick or smooth for your skating. The pressure melting can also be applied to rocks. As a matter of fact, if you think about it, ice is a kind of rock. It's specifically a mineral but if it has some other extraneous particles in it like a glacier does, a glacier is rock. It happens to be almost one single mineral, ice. But it is a mixture of things and therefore glacial ice could be considered to be a type of a rock.

Having talked about this, I will put on the overhead a very complex drawing that you'll soon get in your text and we'll get the wide scope of this. You perhaps have seen this before. This is, in color now, our new theory, our examination of the plates of the earth. We will go through the history of the terminology and the theories that were set forth, and then questions asked to determine whether those were good theories or whether they needed refinement.

Today we believe that on earth there are a series of plates. What we are talking about is plate tectonics--plate meaning that brittle portion of the lithosphere that we had shown previously; tectonics meaning that forces, great forces, are being applied and things are moving about. And when plates move about, they have to interact at some types of boundaries. So the margins of the plates or the boundaries are very critical. Because it is at the boundaries that so much activity takes place.

If we were in our classrooms to set up a world map and mark on it throughout the school year all the earthquakes that we heard about, or maybe even we subscribe to a data collection center and over the net we get the information that earthquakes today in Tokyo or yesterday in Alaska or along the Idaho-Wyoming border, and we marked all of those, it would not be random distribution. We would find a concentration of earthquakes of stronger energy release at certain places on the globe. In a similar fashion, if we were to monitor where active volcanoes currently exist or volcanoes that seem to indicate some activity, we find again that the concentration of those volcanoes is not random. There are specific locations. Furthermore, if we took both the volcano map and the earthquake map and we laid them one on top of the other, we would see in certain areas a striking overlay.

It really becomes a situation where it is a concentration, because the same processes are encouraging both earthquakes and volcanoes to form. There is, in other words, a connection. And you may well know the term of the Ring of Fire. That is a zone around the rim of the Pacific Ocean where there are significant volcanoes and earthquakes year in and year out. I'll zero in and do a little telescopic of the North American Plate. And here we are somewhere in West Virginia, and at that scale that dot probably covers all of us. OK, and you say: Oh shucks, we're in the middle of a plate. All of that blue, it must be kind of boring moving in the middle of the plate. And my response to you is it wasn't always this way. In the texts you probably use, it implies that plate tectonics or the collision of plates was a one-time event. When in reality, we will discuss the fact that it's almost like an accordion but moving very slowly. Plates come together and then they pull apart. And to talk about our mountains in Appalachia, we will have to discuss an early phase when the continents were apart and then a phase when they came together, and that will only form the basement for West Virginia. Because then they pulled apart again and then they came together again to form the Appalachian Mountains, and then they've been pulling apart so that it is a sequence of plate activities through time.

You say: well how rapidly is this moving? Have you ever watched your thumbnail grow? You say: that's a pretty silly statement. Perhaps some have tried to let nails grow and if you were able to let your nail grow for a full year, the total growth would be very similar to the rate at which plates, many plates, are moving. It's a very slow process but it means that here in West Virginia, we are moving west. We're heading constantly at a rate of about two and a half to three centimeters per year. You say: well that's pretty slow. In my lifetime we're not going to move very far. I guess I won't have to change my address! It'll stay the same. Well, in the context of latitude and longitude, you have moved over your life span. And then when we place it in the millions of years, hundreds of millions of years, you'd say: uh-oh. We're going to have to examine this more carefully because that could potentially measure great distances.

Let's go back to the overhead and pick up that topic that boundaries can only do certain things, one with the other. And if we understand what happens at those boundaries, we may be able to do a great deal in the discussion of not only plate tectonics but also all of geology. And it turns out that if you take an orange and you cut segments of the peel, but then try to move the peel around, there's going to be conflict at the margins. The boundaries are going to have to be accommodated by the attempt to move one plate with respect to the other, or one segment of the peel with respect to the other. And it turns out to be just three ways in which these plates and boundaries can interact.

Convergent, with the help of arrows, the plates come together. And we have previously shown that there are two types of plates that we'll talk about by composition, the continent, and the ocean. Now how many of these types of situations do we find in nature? Because after all, we've said the present is the key to the past. Let's look around the globe and see where ocean and continent may come together. What we find is that ocean and ocean plates come together in convergent boundaries. We also find that continent to continent plates come together. And ocean to continent plates also come together at margins. So all three combinations exist under the model of convergent plates.

The next discussion would be for divergent. As you might suspect, with the arrows demonstrating how these plates move, they're pulling apart rather then coming together. And only two types of conditions exist on earth. Try as we might we can't find the third, but we clearly find oceans splitting apart, pulling apart. We clearly find continents pulling apart. But no where on earth do we find today and no where in the geologic record do we find ocean and continent segments pulling apart. It just doesn't happen. And that's of interest to us. That starts us on the trail of explaining these types of boundaries and explaining what's going on in nature.

The third and final possibility is a word that's jargon. It's two words and the first one is jargon. It is a real word transformed, it changes or alters. And the second one is a fault. The rock is brittle, it breaks. But this is a different type of break. Looking down on it our arrows would show a side to side slippage. If you put your two hands together and pushed them, and you looked down as if your hands now are parts of the surface of the earth, that is a transform fault happening. Here again we find only two conditions. The ocean to ocean transform faults do exist but they tend to be small. The ones we really have a concern about, it turns out, are continent to continent transform faults.

I suggest that you would be able to identify a location in the United States where living on a transform fault zone can be fairly risky. Which of the states does life on the fault zone provide some excitement from time to time and risk? And the state is California. We even know the name of a specific transform fault already, the San Andreas. So these are the boundaries and we will find some cartoons.

I'm going to take this off the overhead and put on a cartoon. And in this model we are talking about both convergent and divergent situations. In this one we see an ocean-continent or continent-ocean convergence. In some locations, the continent is coming in from the west. In other locations, the continent is on the east. In this particular model, we see the diving down. Which plate it is that's most dense is the oceanic plate. The less dense plate is the continental plate. So in this particular model, we have a situation where continents and oceans collide and the ocean plate goes down. In a divergent margin, the plates are pulling apart. And as a result new ocean floor is forming. This along a divergent margin.

So this is a general introduction. This doesn't mean in any way, shape, or form that they're the only ones. We have to yet do the additional details. And that's what we'll do in subsequent shows. Well, I think it's time to just review again what you're doing and what you need to do. If you want to get on the web site to have a transcript of this or if you want to gather additional information, remember this web site: http://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu. This is the same overhead we showed before. Additionally, remember the Saturday Exploratories, September 12, October 10, November 7, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Bring a bag lunch. Sites are located at Braxton Middle School at Flatwoods, the Geological Survey here in Morgantown, or Wheeling Park High School. So as we wrap up, let me throw it back to Phyllis with a few closing comments. Phyllis?

Phyllis: Some closing announcements: First of all, I want everyone to know that every site, that the satellite broadcast sites will be continued for the entire semester. So those are a go. The facilitators, I will ask that you get to me as soon as possible the names and the addresses of the participants, regardless of what credit they are applying for, so that we can get to them as soon as possible a textbook. I do need to have numbers and I'm pleased to say that Project CATS will be funding the textbooks for the participants.

I wanted to emphasize, and you may want to share this with your colleagues, that this course is of a different format and has a different content. So if those individuals had selected to take the course of fall 1997, this course is different from the one taught at that time. So they can take and join in this course as well. I encourage you to go out and talk with your colleagues. The Earth Revealed tapes can be used in your classroom. I encourage you to set your VCRs and tape them from the PBS broadcasts so that you will have a high-quality tape to use in your classrooms. And thank you for being with us this evening. I want to shift it back to Dr. Bob.

Dr. Bob: OK. Thank you very much. As we conclude, you perhaps have noticed, although you have been focusing on us all night, that we have as a backdrop a colorful map. And you'll recognize the shape and the outline, and you have been provided a small eight and a half by eleven format of the very same map. Although the small format just does not quite do justice to the details of the color. But look for patterns. Look for connections to those patterns. We are trying to determine the geology of West Virginia in this course in the context of what we just introduced in plate tectonics. We're trying to look at the changes of the surface of West Virginia in the context of the water cycle that we introduced. And life in West Virginia is very much determined by the water cycle, by the rocks that are in existence, by the economic value of one rock in greater extent then another rock. And you will see in general that the colors in the western two-thirds of the state are a sequence, a sequence of patterns especially on the eight and a half by eleven sheet are all one color, they're all similar age. The western two-thirds of the state of West Virginia, including the Northern Panhandle, are locations where you would find the potential for coal amongst the rocks. Maybe not always at the surface but at depth. And of course coal is a principle economic resource in the state of West Virginia. The eastern portion, the colors are merged, they're long and narrow. The pattern is one that runs northeast to southwest. Why? Could it be that it's plate tectonics? Could it be that North American is represented in part by West Virginia and Africa colliding and everything in between gets rumpled and distorted? Could it be? Tune in the next time. We'll look forward to leaving you hang on that one, a grabber for the next one!

Take care. Everyday is a great day for a field trip! See you next time and see you Saturday for those who are participating in the Saturday Exploratories.

WVGES Education Specialist, Tom Repine (repine@wvgs.wvnet.edu)

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