Geoscience Education in the Mountain State:
CATS Geology Telecourse, Fall 1998,
Show 4 Transcript

CATS Telecourse Broadcast
Geology 290
November 12, 1998

Dr. Bob: Well, greetings one and all. Here we are again, in these nice cool days in November with Deb Hemler. Bob Behling here, and we're off for another journey into the wonders of physical science and specifically geology. We'll be talking quite a bit about West Virginia today. We also be talking about the tests, that wonderful exercise and activity that we have to work on. We'll be doing that in the second half of the session today.

But first, Deb, we've had quite a few questions as to what a unit outline would really be like. Could you share with us some of your thoughts and past experiences of what would constitute a unit outline?

Deb: The first question that Dr. Bob assigned on the final--you would call this reflective exercise--was to design a unit plan. And there have been a great deal, there's been a great deal of concern about how to do this and what should be on the unit plan. What we've done for you is just come with an outline--this is not certainly what yours should look like because it is just a general overview--but just to kind of generate some thoughts and to get you thinking about what perhaps you could do with your class for this first question.

The first thing you have to really consider is what scope do you want to deal with when you're dealing with a unit plan? You can start out very broad and then focus on the specifics of being in West Virginia and applying this topic to West Virginia. Or you just spend the whole unit talking about just West Virginia and these topics. It just depends on how much prior knowledge the students have and where you want to start this unit outline.

The way I like to start when I'm doing a unit plan is: what kinds of questions can I ask the students at the beginning of a day to sort drive the learning for that particular day? And as you can see, this is sort of designed for a middle school group. Probably fifth or sixth grade. And on Monday I'd like to address the question: what are the characteristics of a mountain range? For example, we take for granted what mountains are, but do students really know what these things are? And what constitutes a mountain range? And you'd find that many adults probably don't have a good grasp of this either. Say, Tuesday then, we finally know what a mountain range is. Where are all the mountain ranges coming from? What generates these ranges? Where are they located? Wednesday then, we would talk about where are the mountains in West Virginia? Specifically we'll take a look at the mountains themselves. And then Thursday we would talk about how the West Virginia mountains are represented on maps. And then on Friday, we'd address the questions: should West Virginia really be called the mountain state?

So this is kind of a general flow through of what we would do in the classroom during the course of a week. So if you took a specific look at Day One, what we're looking at here, the first is, what are the characteristics of a mountain? That was Day One's plan. The rationale here is to pre-assess the students on their prior knowledge. In other words, what do they understand about mountains? What constitutes a mountain? You can do several things to achieve this. You can do some brainstorming to ask the students what they know and put them up on the board. You can have them do a concept map around mountain ranges. You can have them do a short essay on including the characteristics of a mountain range. You could do what elementary teachers know is a KWL chart. What do they know? What do they want to learn? And in the end, what did they learn? So that would progress during the course of the whole unit. And then they might even draw a picture that shows the anatomy of a mountain.

So that would generate or start the unit and then we would work on determining where these mountain ranges are located in the world. So I would split them up into groups maybe and have each group take a different land mass and research what mountains might be located on those particular land masses and then get a description of those. And they could use either textbooks or encyclopedias. They could use CD-ROMS. They could use laser disks. They can even venture on the Internet depending on the availability in the classroom. Then they would mark and label these mountain ranges on a bulletin board. And so that bulletin board then would be a reference for the rest of the unit. And we would refer back to this from time to time. So that gives them a point of reference. They now know what a mountain is. Theoretically they know where they're located around the world.

So now they're going to focus then on where they came from. So on Day Two, where do the mountains come from? Well, we're going to try to teach them the mechanisms for mountain building. So these instructional strategies might include a class discussion. I'm going to assume at this point that I have already done a discussion on plate tectonics. So this might be review for them. So they would draw on their knowledge of plate tectonics and remember, maybe or maybe not, that maybe the collision of plates cause, continent to continent cause the creation of mountains. And maybe the subduction of a plate, an oceanic plate, underneath the continental plate, creates a mountain chain. Or these types of things. If not, maybe I could use a video disk to kind of refresh their memory on plate tectonics and they would draw out those pieces of information and we would discuss them.

So they're now going to build on that knowledge of what they know about mountains and they're going to figure out then what creates these mountains. Then we're going to work on taking that knowledge that they have and applying it to that bulletin board again. They're gonna take a map of the plate tectonics, which they studied earlier, presumably, and they're gonna take a look at that bulletin board that they have. And those groups then are going to get back together and see if they can explain, based on what they know about mountain building processes, where those mountains came from. And some will be obvious based on what they know, but some won't be so obvious. For example, the Appalachian Mountains aren't anywhere near any type of plate boundaries. And so those we'll have to leave until the next day. But at least we have accounted for many, many, many of them like the Himalayas for example, or the Andes, or maybe these mountains in Honduras. Say, the mountains in the Aleutian Islands. These types of things we'll have explained by the end of that day.

So now West Virginia comes in Day Three. What do we do? We take them on a field trip. That's the best thing to do for kids. We've got a field trip then that takes them through the physiographic provinces. We're going to talk a little more about physiographic provinces tonight. We'll start them in the Allegheny Plateau and we'll work them through into the Valley and Ridge region. And the students will keep field notebooks. They'll take a look at the rocks. They'll take a look at the types of rocks. They'll take a look at the orientation of those rocks. Are they relatively flat-lying or are they on edge? I suggest Spruce Knob and Seneca Rocks could be two of those stops on the way. The kids enjoy it and there's a lot to be seen there since Spruce Knob is on that transition and you can see the difference in the mountains between the Valley and Ridge and the Allegheny Plateau. If you can't do a field trip, well then maybe you can do a slide presentation of some form, but the field trip definitely is a good thing to do. And you can use that information later on in your classroom for many, many other things. So you can bring rocks back and you can keep using the information that you get from...

Dr. Bob: Whether or not they go on the field trip isn't the point. You can plan, you can outline what they want to do in this exercise. And then, say, if the money is available at the time, if the permission, if we can afford the bus--the all important "if we can afford the bus."

Deb: But if they can't go on the field trip, then you've got to bring it to them. Bring it to them in the form of slides. Bring it to them anyway you can. The rocks. Bring it to them in drawings. But they need to see West Virginia, then, in this whole scheme of things with mountains.

So then on Day Four what are you going to do? You're going to take a look at these maps. They've been out in the field. They've seen these mountains. They've seen the western part of West Virginia. They've seen the eastern part of West Virginia. Now they need to look at how that's represented on maps. What do the strata look like on maps compared to what they've seen? Can they see that there's wrinkling in the rocks? Can they see that to the west, there's relatively flat-lying rocks? Talk about the fact that the west is relatively flat. The rocks are flat. And what is dissected, then, is the streams and rivers that run through, that cut down and create that relief that you have. Whereas in the west, you really have this folding and faulting going on as a result of plate tectonics. And you talk about Pangea. And you talk about Africa. You talk about where that collision came from based on the orientation of those mountains.

And then finally on the last day we do an assessment. And that would be: should West Virginia really be called the mountain state? They have to take all the knowledge, then, that they have gained through the course of that week and write, say, an article for a local newspaper. They can do it in groups or they do it individually talking about all the information they've learned, what they've seen, what they can compare to the maps, and really assess how much of the state is actually mountainous and how much of it is really plateau.

And so that's kind of a general outline for youngsters on how you can address this issue of mountains in West Virginia.

Dr. Bob: Let me just build on the topic for a second. This is not the one that you necessarily will do, but the way I would put in the overprint of the specific geologic information--and Deb will work on the overhead as I talk about these types of things. And one of the things you want to do is, say, well, how many different ways can mountains form? And give them from their broad knowledge of, say, the United States, different type impressions. They've probably seen pictures. For example, you say: are there mountains in Hawaii? How did the mountains form in Hawaii? So let's go to the overhead and just put four signal dots. Let's keep it real simple. So we'll look at four different broad items, and put the four dots down, and that gives the students a focus point. They know that it's not going to go on forever. They're going to be specific examples.

So under the first dot, and there's no special order to this, put down Hawaii. Now recall that they will have already talked about aspects of plate tectonics. They should know what a hot spot is and what makes the mountains in Hawaii. What do we call them--volcanoes? Right! The type of mountains are volcanoes. Now we're going to go through three other types of mountains. And this is just a good review for us too, because it's always nice to break things down into parts. And these are simple parts, and it makes the total picture much more easy to understand because, as I always said earlier, parts are more friendly then the whole.

So now I'll shift your attention to say there are other types of mountains and when we look at them on road cuts, we see that the rocks demonstrate and tell us something. So the next example I'm going to say is the example of West Virginia. What are the types of mountains in West Virginia? The Appalachians are an example of the mountains in West Virginia. And they may want to just do it by state too. And you say: what other states? West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and so on. The students will realize that there are a number of states. It's not a small little mountain area. But when we look at the rocks that we see at the surface, especially in Pennsylvania, what are they like? They're folded. And guess what would be a nice classification for the mountain type that Appalachians describe? Fold mountains. So we have volcanoes and fold mountains.

Now the next one is more of a stretch of the imagination because most of our folks just haven't been there. Perhaps you haven't been to this site either, but I would take you next to California and specifically the Sierra Nevadas. The Sierra Nevada mountains are a beautiful high mountain range. The local relief, at least on the eastern margin, is extremely dramatic because there are locations, Death Valley and elsewhere, that are below sea level. And the types of the mountains are well over 12- to 13-thousand feet. So the local relief is spectacular. But the rocks are tilted, but they're not folded. And a thorough examination of the geology demonstrates that the rocks have been broken. They move in a brittle fashion. And the very resistant rocks have gone up and are tilted as a giant block. And they're bounded by faults. And guess what we call those types of mountains? Fault block mountains or simply fault mountains. So we're keeping it real simple.

Now the next one--I would take you to one of two places. Let's take you to the Adirondacks in New York because this is a very striking type of situation. Now in this situation, we have very, very old rocks and the outline on the geologic map looks like a bull's-eye. It's not exactly perfectly round but it's essentially a very round type of appearance. And the old rocks are exposed. So put down that the Pre-Cambrian is in the mound in the center of the boundary, and then bring the rocks up, lapping on each side to that mound and almost straight lines and horizontal now--they start getting more horizontal. And they filled up against it. And what that sort of looks like is that, that whole mountain chain, or mountain range--the Adirondacks--were formed as if there was some magical piston pushing rocks up, and then the over-capping roof was taken away by erosion and the Paleozoic rocks are all up around the Adirondacks. And if there is an uplift, guess what geologists call it? An uplifted mountain, or an uplift mountain.

Now another example of this, specifically like the Adirondacks, are the Black Hills in South Dakota. So we might put that down because the Adirondacks and the Black Hills are very, very similar in outline and form on the geologic map of the United States. And in the Black Hills, there's Pre-Cambrian rocks in the center and younger rocks, millions of years, hundreds of millions of years younger, around the edges.

But there is another great example of an uplift that produces a great deal of relief. And folks may still want to call it a mountain. And the location--the Colorado Plateau. So, in the Colorado Plateau area--and I would suggest that many youngsters have seen at least a picture of the Grand Canyon--there's great uplift difference, and that helps bring it back to West Virginia. Because the uplift has been of a whole table top. It's like taking the table they're working at and putting six inches of wood blocks underneath the whole table and lifting the whole thing up. And then rivers are going to start cutting down into it. And it looks like a highland plateau, which it is. It's very high. It's over a mile high in many places. And in some places there are even step-like features. The pronunciation of one of these areas around the Grand Canyon is Mogollon. And it's spelled M-O-G-O-L-L-O-N. The Mogollon Plateau is many steps of these uplift types, but that demonstrates again the aspects of mountain building, that sometimes places are uplifted. Now why were the Adirondacks, the Black Hills uplifted? We speculate as the geologic community that perhaps North America at some time in the past few tens of millions of years has moved over a hot spot, or there has been a density change and the material became less dense. And what happens to less dense material? It rises in comparison to more dense material. Recall we had a session where we had blocks floating in water. And when we take off more mass, then the block lifts up. We were using that to discuss erosion. Isostocy was the specific word.

So here we have four types of mountains. The youngsters generate some of that as groups. We wouldn't expect that the youngsters would be able to capture all the nuances of these things, but working in groups of four or five and then sharing the group information, which is non-threatening and yet very useful, we can get the four different types of mountains. And that's a good review because then you look back at these--how many of these are actually in West Virginia? Now we use the Appalachians, and they should get that one, but the others--they say are there any volcanoes in West Virginia? And they'll always be somebody in the class who'll say, well there's a Volcano, West Virginia. But it is not a volcano. And perhaps our good friends down in Franklin will say: now, wait a minute, I thought that somebody said that if you climbed Trimble Knob, which is down in Monterey just 20 miles away or so, that if you looked at the rocks, they're volcanic rocks. And it turns out you say: yes Virginia, there are volcanoes there. But the result of that extrusive igneous activity or nearly extrusive maybe it was in some of these cases very, very close to the surface. We see it at the surface in Virginia but we do not see it as clearly in West Virginia. So some of our youngsters--you know if we were live in real time on the web and some of our classes, Paula's class for example down in Franklin, said well, we've got volcanic rocks down here, igneous rocks near the surface. And the youngsters over in Ed's class said, oh, we sure don't. Wouldn't that be neat if we could get together and have a real-time field trip. If you could show us the pictures and the rocks that you have collected on your field trip. It's not only a virtual field trip, we're sharing in real time all this information. Well, some day we'll get to that point. And I think that would be a great thing to do. Eighth graders sharing from three different points around the state their information about their types of mountains.

So that's what we're after in these unit outlines. We're after things that you may be able to do now and that you sure would like to do if money were no object, if time were no object, scheduling busses were no object. And we wanted to do an outline, this is what we'll do. And since we know we can't get all of that in, we will step it down and fit it to our particular, what our dream is and what our reality is. But we can still do some really neat stuff. Now, let us say that part of your activity and your unit outline includes a stop, or maybe it's right in your backyard, because we've now visited, we've had the cycle, the carousel of all the Exploratories on site. There were operations and opportunities and we saw red rocks and green rocks. What does it mean when you see a red rock?

Deb: Well, this goes back to that ultra-confusing statement that was made two broadcasts ago about oxidation and reduction. Let's revisit oxidation and reduction. This is a sandstone--happens to be a Juniata sandstone.

Dr. Bob: On a map the Juniata would be capital O, lower case J. So what age of the Paleozoic would that be?

Deb: That would be the Ordovician. So we've got a red rock and what does that usually mean to us? Well, when we look at a red rock, we know that we've got a component here that we know is iron. And we know that iron, when it rusts, turns red. So we have an iron component here that we recognize as essentially rusted. And we know that iron when it rusts is what we say oxidized. So we've got an oxidation. What that means is simply this: the iron atoms have lost electrons. OK, that's it, it has a positive charge.

Dr. Bob: Now in what grades would they still not talk about losing electrons and having a concept map of this sort of situation? Is this something eighth graders could handle?

Deb: Sure. You can talk about it. Now whether they totally comprehend oxidation and reduction is another thing. But they can understand that something is lost and something is gained. How much of that that they really understand depends on the level of the student. But they can understand rust. They know this. They know that it's in the presence of oxygen. They don't really understand all the nuances. But they know that iron combines with oxygen and it forms rust. They get that.

Dr. Bob: And they could have done that as a little lab, right? We talked about that before.

Deb: Exactly. Using nails doing whatever.

Dr. Bob: As long as they're not aluminum nails.

Deb: That's right, don't use aluminum nails.

Dr. Bob: Test it ahead of time.

Deb: So, when we see red in the sandstones, we know there's iron components in there and that they rusted and that's what we call oxidized. Don't confuse that with combining with oxygen. Rust combines with oxygen but oxidation simply means you lose electrons. And it just so happens that in the case of rust, it's combining with oxygen.

Now, let's take a look at this rock. This one is a striking different color. This one's green as opposed to red. Now what does that mean? It simply means that again, we have iron in the rocks. But it means that the environment under which this sandstone, this is a green sandstone-- the rock we had before was a sandstone and everybody knows now that these are sand-sized particles or give or take a little bit, we know what the grain comparitor sizes are for those now. We know what constitutes a sedimentary rock--it has iron in it. And the difference between this green one and the red one is simply this: that the iron in this particular sandstone has been reduced. And what that means is essentially this: it got an electron back. So it's gaining electrons. So it's reduced so it gained electrons. So it's no longer that Fe3+. It's got a different charge to it now. It's gained an electron. And that's all we're talking about when we're talking about oxidation and reduction. So when we look at sandstones, the green means it was formed in a reducing environment. When we look at shales the green means it's formed in a reducing environment. If we see that it's red, we know that it was formed in an oxidizing environment, that it's iron, and that it rusted, and that's all we're trying to say. Hopefully that clears up the oxidation and reduction confusion that we caused two weeks ago.

Dr. Bob: And where did you get this rock from?

Deb: This actually came from a field trip that we took with teachers the last time we were in Snowshoe, West Virginia. We were on our way down the hillside and somebody screamed out the edge of the bus: what are those green rocks? It was a teachable moment and we got out and collected them.

Dr. Bob: And, amidst the snowflakes as I recall. Now this is Mississippian-age, so how would that--this is lower Mississippian as a matter of fact. Now in parts of West Virginia, we would have called it Pocono and it's not typical of Pocono. So we'll just say what capital letter do we use for Mississippian age rock?

Deb: Well, typically "M."

Dr. Bob: Capital M. And then let's say we don't know which formation that was so we'll just say, lower in front of it, in lower case, we'll write lower Mississippian. Just write lower, the word lower and leave it at that. We'll say that it's a lower Mississippian-age rock. Now, does this look like a sandstone? Maybe tip it up on edge, you'll be careful that we get the focal point. It's still, it kind of looks layered. Can you show us some layer in there?

Deb: Yeah, oh yeah, there's some layering in there.

Dr. Bob: And it wasn't all that thick, was it?

Deb: No, it wasn't a thick layer.

Dr. Bob: Now where in the ocean or on land do you think you'd find green without oxygen? Would that be underwater or would that have been on the surface where rivers are flowing?

Deb: Well, it would probably be somewhere under the water.

Dr. Bob: It's under the water. So the reducing environment in this particular case was underwater. The oxidizing environment was above water. Now in West Virginia, a great portion of the state has coal deposits. And we can also talk about oxidation and reduction there. Because when organic material falls on the surface--this is a great time of year to talk about it. What about the leaves that are falling under the tree in our front yard and back yard? Will they be there next year?

Deb: I hope not.

Dr. Bob: They're going to be there the rest of this week, that's for sure. The point is that that organic material is going to decay. It's an effect in a very oxidizing environment and the bacteria and the decay, it's gone. And if we had laid a couple of steel nails in with those leaves, what would the nails look like?

Deb: Maybe pretty red.

Dr. Bob: They'd be pretty red. Now I bet a number of you have done the garbage experiment, right? Composting. What do you do in that case?

Deb: Well, you can do a number of things. You dig a hole and you bury a bunch of different types of things and you dig it back up in the spring and you see what's left.

Dr. Bob: OK. So in effect, this could be an extension of composting. You could take leaves, set them out in one of those plastic milk carton containers with lots of holes in them. You could build up a lot of plastic, throw a couple of steel nails in there, and let it sit for a long time. Maybe until spring. Take another batch with a similar amount of leaves with some of the nails, and if you had an area in the yard that you could bury it, and maybe, and this is forcing the issue, but what I would suggest is take an amount, put it in a plastic container. Fill the plastic container with water and bury it. And let it sit in water for the same amount of time until spring. What do you think you'd get when you excavated it again? When you took those leaves and pulled that little wash basin back out?

Deb: Yuck!

Dr. Bob: Yeah, yuck. Right. You think it would smell? You'd think it would smell. And what particular smell might you get?

Deb: Oh, some methane, swamp gas, kind of.

Dr. Bob: Rotten eggs. Maybe it would smell like rotten eggs. Do you think the nails would be rusted?

Deb: I don't think so.

Dr. Bob: Have them speculate. Don't we do that with the kids? Predict. Predict what's going to happen and if it happens. And if it doesn't happen. Explain what we see at the end. Now, what have we tried to recreate? What would the leaves look like?

Deb: Oh, that's a good question.

Dr. Bob: You put them in as brown and red and orange.

Deb: Black.

Dr. Bob: Yeah, they'd probably look black. Have you noticed that the leaves this fall are dominantly reddish in color? Do you know that leaves are always red underneath but they're masked when they are growing, and live by...?

Deb: Chlorophyl.

Dr. Bob: Chlorophyl, which makes them green. So that this particular year, we didn't get great a varieties of colors. They were just dominantly that orangish, reddish color. Now the first time that I was down in Flatwoods, we talked about using Crayolas and the different colors of Crayolas to try to make a color chart. We never did. I tried to pull out the Project Wet activity that used the Crayolas and I don't know that we ever distributed that. So we're going to go through it again and make sure that the next time we meet in December, we'll have that package.

Deb: There are a couple of colors you can't seem to find very easily on that chart.

Dr. Bob: Even if you have a box--what are the big boxes of Crayolas? Crayolas come in a hundred-twenty or something like that. It's really very difficult. But, put this rock back on again. What color would the kids probably call it. Now would some kids call it red?

Deb: No.

Dr. Bob: No, they really, really wouldn't, would they? What might they call it?

Deb: Red-brown.

Dr. Bob: Red-brown. Would some use maroon?

Deb: Yeah.

Dr. Bob: Yeah, that's OK. Then what you're trying to discuss overall is if you see an outcrop and the outcrop may be in your imagination, the wall in the library, OK, and you see thin beds of green and then massive beds of red, and then you see some gray beds, which environment is gray most like? Is it most like the red? Or is it more like the green? What do you think? What do you think kids would think?

Deb: I would think they would say probably it's more like the green.

Dr. Bob: Yeah, and you know what it is? It's more like the green. We didn't rehearse this folks. This is all spontaneous. Isn't it great, live TV, with fantastic production values?

Deb: On the spot with Dr. Bob.

Dr. Bob: Absolutely. But that's exactly--I just came less then two hours ago, a thesis, a master's thesis in geology and we were talking about the same thing. This student was looking at the conditions under which the Pennsylvanian coal, the Pittsburgh seam, which is a real moose in thickness, and where could you go to find the same age rocks but there's no coal? And what he had done was look along I-79, down past Weston and a little bit further down I-79. A total mileage of about 80 miles, so that sounds neat, from Morgantown about 79 miles or so down I-79. And he could find, and when he really looked carefully, he could find just a thin little layer of black. And then that black disappeared and the rocks were more reddish except they had a wee thin little black layer up at the top. That thin black layer was the top of the soil profile. And the rest of the red means that it was a little higher in elevation, and then in a basin the organic material was accumulating but not being destroyed because it was under water in a reducing environment. And the soil was in an oxidizing environment. Red soil--oxidizing. Oxidation. Blackish rocks, greenish rocks--reducing. Or even gray rocks.

Now there are minerals--let's go to the overhead, and for your notes now, you may or may not use this with the student. Let's just put down red at the top and then below that, green or gray. And I'm going to give you now three different minerals. And we'll talk about. I'll give you the chemistry, but that's not the critical thing, the balancing of the equation isn't critical. Under the red conditions, iron has combined with oxygen and it's Fe and there are two of those, O₃, iron oxide. And the name of that particular mineral is hematite. Now it turns out that that's a very important ore for iron. It is a very important ore for iron. Now you say, for those, if you're working with seniors in high school, how much further could you go? Could you look at that equation and then have them determine whether that's the Fe₂+?

Deb: Oh, easily. They can do oxidation numbers.

Dr. Bob: So what is that?

Deb: As juniors, they can do oxidation numbers, so this would be the Fe₃.

Dr. Bob: And both of them are Fe₃, because oxygen is always minus two.

Deb: Don't worry about that. You don't have to know that.

Dr. Bob: You don't have to know that but those who are teaching it at that level, you see why we're doing those connections.

Deb: If you teach chemistry, this will make sense.

Dr. Bob: If you teach chemistry or are working with youngsters in that age group, they will work on it. If you're teaching the seventh grade, you hand them off. Later down the road, they find out more and more about that particular mineral, hematite. Now the green and gray, going back to the overhead, there is a lack of oxygen and the iron, Fe plus sulfur. What is the notorious mineral that is a combination of iron plus sulfur? But don't let me fool you.

Deb: Iron pyrite.

Dr. Bob: Yes, pyrite. So pyrite is the mineral. And is pyrite a problem in West Virginia?

Deb: Most definitely. For sulfur.

Dr. Bob: Yeah, because of the source of the sulfur, and then when the pyrite does get to the surface, when it is exposed to a great deal of oxygen, it oxidizes. And bacteria get at it too. And they play a very important role in this. And what do you get?

Deb: Yellow boy.

Dr. Bob: Yellow boys is what the terminology, the colloquial term--what you get is acid mine drainage, and then the iron and the sulfur break apart. And the iron, since it's up on the surface, can combine with oxygen again and it rusts. It shows a rusty color. Now, there's another mineral. Now this one is, this stretches, this goes a bit beyond. The mineral name is a result of the combination of iron plus carbonate. Let's go back to the overhead and write the symbol for iron, Fe +, and then the carbonate radical becomes the CO₃ and that's charged. And the mineral name is siderite.

Deb: They have actually seen this. I had a siderite nodule at all of the Exploratories. They got to hold one in their hand and they got to...

Dr. Bob: And what was it's weight?

Deb: Very heavy.

Dr. Bob: It was very heavy. But what was it's color?

Deb: It was red.

Dr. Bob: No. So that was a reddish color because...?

Deb: It had oxidized.

Dr. Bob: It had oxidized on the surface. If you broke it open, it would not be red inside. That's right. So it's an iron and carbonate nodule and what does the pyrite form? What form does the pyrite take in this type of an environment? Nodules or globule shape, too. Now siderite is very much a compound that forms in the soils, some of these soils under reducing conditions. Now in a soil profile, how could you sometime during the year have a reducing environment in the soil and at other times have the oxidizing environment in the soil? What would you change?

Deb: The water level.

Dr. Bob: The water level. Because if the water level's high, the wet season...

Deb: You've got a reducing environment.

Dr. Bob: Yeah. You've squished out the oxygen. It's a simplistic way of looking at it. But it's no longer an oxidizing environment. It's more of a reducing environment. When it stops raining, evaporation, drainage of the ground water, perhaps many months at a time, what happens to the water table? Without anybody taking water out. It drops. So that in soils and along wetlands, if you dig a trench or dig a pit and look at the soil, and you don't have to go down very deep, you see that in some cases you get gray soils with little splotches or mottles of red color. And that indicates that the water table has been going up and down. And that graduate student who presented this paper, what did he show? On the highland areas, up in the highland areas, he showed evidence that the water table fluctuated back and forth 300 million years ago. It's been a process that's been ongoing for a long, long time. It's just on the Earth's surface, we haven't had plants and critters until the last 300 to 400 million years. For billions of years, the Earth's surface must have been extremely desolate place to look at. Metals weathering out rapidly, combining with oxygen. Would it look like a Mars-scape or a Moon-scape?

Deb: Or abandoned surface mine.

Dr. Bob: Or abandoned surface mine-scape. It could. Because the plants weren't there. Plants had not yet evolved. And why would critters have come out without plants and without food. Just doesn't make any sense does it? So that the landscape for the first 7/8ths or 8/9ths of the Earth's presence as a geologic entity, it was desolate. Nothing out on the surface. The surface, it must have been a nasty place. If you could take a time capsule trip on back you'd probably--now there would be oxygen to breath, the atmosphere is changing. Now early on there wouldn't have been oxygen to breath. By two billion years ago, there started to be some oxygen to breath.

Deb: The question might come up in the audiences, if there were no land plants, where did the oxygen come from? And we have to remember that there was phytoplankton and things like this in the oceans producing oxygen.

Dr. Bob: Just little bubbles at a time. And if you're interested in that, and if that peaks your interest, join us in January. Because in January we're going to talk about historical geology. Now we don't have that information up on the web site yet with specifics as to what to pre-register for, but we have to generate some numbers, do some paperwork, because above all if the University is one thing it's a bureaucracy. And therefore I have to do all kinds of--I characterize, hey, I'm still draining the swamp as we're doing tonight and looking for the alligators. I can't even think yet about January.

Deb: But the sites will all be the same. Wherever you have a facilitated site, those will remain there.

Dr. Bob: And we will meet on Wednesdays rather then Thursdays, simply because the timing in getting the schedule put together, it turns out that will be Wednesdays and we'll be meeting with folks every third Wednesday.

Deb: From six to eight.

Dr. Bob: I forgot what the time is.

Deb: From six to eight.

Dr. Bob: And it will be interspersed with two weeks of biology, one week of geology. What we probably will do is we'll try to be the first one--and that's the first show isn't going to be until mid-January because the University doesn't begin until Monday, January 11th, or something like that.

Deb: Second full week in January.

Dr. Bob: The second full week in January. So we'll get together with you and a lot of information. Keep watching the web site at the Geologic Survey.

Deb: And look for the CATS flyers that are mailed out.

Dr. Bob: That's right. We'll get all that information.

Deb: We're working on the textbook now, so you'll have it by then.

Dr. Bob: That's right. We've chosen the textbook, it's a dandy. Lot's of good color pictures. It's newly done. It turns out to be a textbook that's based on systems. Whether or not you buy into the systems package, there's some very nice things that go on with systems. That is the hydrosphere, the geosphere, and the atmosphere, and the biosphere. The cryosphere, we could talk about the frozen sphere, because in geology it makes a lot of sense. But there are others who write textbooks without going through these systems. In a way, it's become a buzz word. It's become very popular. But we have chosen the book, we're engaged in getting that. And for greater or lesser interests, there is no video package per say, because no one has ever done a show on historical geology. People have put together aspects of life on Earth. We'll have videos to share with you. Lot's on dinosaurs. We could spend every week looking at videos that people have done on dinosaurs. But we will not bury you in dinosaur videos. But we will bring to you the selected videos on dinosaurs, early life and so forth.

But let's get back to where we are right now. We talked about mountains. We took the time to talk about the unit outline. Now what I think we should do, we have sat here for a number of weeks with this map behind us, in the geology, and for many of you, the travel through West Virginia has not been a steady diet. You haven't been with me on field trips for example. You say: I've heard about--I've been to Seneca Rocks but I wasn't there with a geologist. But I do recall that the rocks weren't flat lying at Seneca Rocks. It looks like they were on end. So what we have done, then, as geologists, as we've studied the rocks and specifically now with West Virginia, we have tried to categorize in big limited number of units what the state of West Virginia looks like. And you have had in your hands previously and again tonight the outline map of the geology of West Virginia and then a little outline on the backside. So if we could go to the TV monitor now, if we could get the TV monitor on the screen, I will just use with the mouse an arrow.

Now we're talking about areas that we call physiographic provinces, and in this case, of West Virginia. Physiographic provinces are two words that are put together. Province is because it's a region. Physiography encompasses a variety of things. From a geologic standpoint, physiology talks about structure. It talks about the type of rocks. It suggests that maybe the age of the rocks are also similar. It also suggests that in the context of geography, that the climate might be fairly similar within some ranges, but very similar. Temperatures, precipitation amounts, and how that precipitation falls, as water or as snow to stay. Of course in West Virginia, now we have no permanent snow fields. So, physiography then, if you talk about climate and you talk about rock and you talk about elevations being within range--gee, what about vegetation, what are the vegetation types? Also be similar. So coming back then to the video or the TV screen, we have a limited number, Appalachian Plateau, and really on your little map you should put an "S" on that because it's more then one plateau. Now we usually think of plateaus as being kind of flat-lying. And some of these plateaus are flat-lying because they're uplifted. And what did that relate to in our unit outline earlier?

Deb: The Grand Canyon.

Dr. Bob: Uplift mountains like the Grand Canyon. Where in West Virginia, for example, do we have a deep gorge and the upland areas stands in quite significant relief?

Deb: The New River.

Dr. Bob: The New River, yeah, exactly. The New River Gorge. You say: well, gee, is that an example of an uplift mountain? And I'll tell you, if you have traveled down to the visitor's center at New River Gorge, they have a raised relief diagram and when you look at that puppy, where the New River crosses that part of West Virginia, it's just like a big raised bubble--like somebody has pumped it up underneath and just that central part of West Virginia has raised. Could it be that that's a sort of mini example of an uplift mountain? The answer is: probably. It's real suspicious because the rocks in that high point in West Virginia are at the base of the Pennsylvanian. Therefore, there's a lot of material lost by erosion above it. And yet some of our other high peaks are of different geologic age, but this one is oldest-most Pennsylvanian in a bulge type feature with a river cutting on down through it. So in climate, do they get a lot of snow down there? In the Beckley area? Oh, yeah, they do. We don't think of that as being a dramatically different climate, but it is. They're up high.

Deb: They're further south, but they're up high.

Dr. Bob: They're further south and you know youngsters have a general feeling that, hey, if you go south it gets warmer all the time. That's right unless you go higher. And if you look at the temperatures in Beckley as compared to some areas where you live...

Deb: Preston County.

Dr. Bob: Well, Preston County's up high too. And there are other counties where the temperatures--you know even if we exchanged meteorological data in eighth grade classes or whatever class, OK, every morning, if we could link up with everyone and check and say what's it doing by you. And say, well, it's raining here, or it's snowing here, and we could get that different meteorological data. Well in this case, Beckley is colder then the other areas. So that's like an uplift mountain.

Now, the reason I had you put an "S" on that is that there is another mountain region, but it's not in West Virginia. It's way down--and I can't really--it's way down south here. Part of it is in Virginia and the rest goes into Kentucky and it's called the Cumberland Mountains. And the Cumberland Mountains are a giant fault block, and it looks on a geologic map of the United States like a giant rectangle trending northeast-southwest just lying there, and it's a thrust fault mountain. So you could stretch the terms and say, gee, this is a lot like the fault mountain that we had used in the unit outline. And you say: wow! By looking at little Trimble Knob in Monterey, Virginia, which is real close to West Virginia, that was like a volcanic knob or hill. And the fold mountains we have. So we do have some selected examples of the types of mountains right here in West Virginia.

But we talking about physiographic provinces. So let's go back to the video screen and note that we have drawn here, and I'm just tracing it along the Allegheny Front with a little wiggle here and there, and up across western Maryland here, and up into Pennsylvania. Well, I tell you, down here, that's hard to find. If you were along with us on our railroad trip at WVSTA in Durbin, we saw some of the last remnants in the southern part of the state of a true Allegheny Front. Because the mountain was way up on the top and that edge where best exhibited is an edge where the mountain top is the Pennsylvanian, the basal Pennsylvanian sandstone. So the Allegheny Front in your notes--you could put a little signature of some sort to say that the best places where the Allegheny Front is shown is the basal Pennsylvanian-Pottsville Group. That capital "P" with the double bar in the vertical for Pennsylvanian and the lower case "p" for Pottsville. And you can go back in your geologic time scale and see where that is.

But now getting back to the video screen, we have this additional region called the Allegheny Mountain section. The Alleghenies are an old term, historic term and if you look at the spelling of the mountain and the county. There's an Allegany County in western Maryland, there's an Allegheny County in Pittsburgh--Pittsburgh's in Allegheny County. There's three different spellings of Allegheny. Why? Because in the early revolutionary days and when these areas were being populated, how were things spelled?

Deb: Phonetically.

Dr. Bob: Phonetic spelling.

Deb: Read the Lewis and Clark journals sometime.

Dr. Bob: Read the real journals of some of those--Lewis and Clark, or surveying for the Mason-Dixon Line.

Deb: How many different ways to spell the word "mosquito" is really amazing.

Dr. Bob: All these things, they're phonetic spelling. And they got turned into the long-term spelling and Anglicized terms of Native American words. Lot's of those in the Alleghenies. And the Potomac River that we now spell it--if you look at Jefferson's time and some of the earlier-- if you look at Lord Fairfax and commissioning, looking for the headwaters of the Potomac River, it's the Potomack, lots of spelling. Well, this Allegheny Mountain section, back to the visual here, the Allegheny Mountain section could also be called the open fold section. So add that in your notes. So by open fold, what we mean now is that there are broad synclines and anticlines.

Deb: That's still considered part of the plateau, theoretically.

Dr. Bob: That's right. It's still part of the plateau. The wrinkles aren't. They're just open, gentle. Now, not all the mountain tops are anticlines. There are some interesting--there's one specifically in this open fold section that is very big. And there's a small little model in this Allegheny Mountain section and it's a state park, is part of it. It is a region where an anticline like this was plunging at both ends and then it got eroded so that's its a topographic valley now. And it has a very biblical name. And the river that empties and drains that valley forms a beautiful falls where we made yet another state park. I'm speaking of Canaan Valley and Blackwater Falls. The Blackwater River has created--as an ancestor it inherits this--the erosion has created a basin in the topography in the Allegheny Mountain section. So the mountains, Cabin and Canaan Mountain, once connected over the top of the valley. And the rock at the top of Cabin Mountain and Canaan Mountain, those mountains which enclose Canaan Valley, the rock up there is the base of the Pennsylvanian-Pottsville, a tough old rock. But the topography is right along the crest of the small anticline. There's another one of those a little bit north in the Allegheny Mountain section, but in conclusion to this first part, over three quarters of the state falls within the Appalachian Plateaus physiographic province.

Then the Valley and Ridge, and of course, what do you think it looks like if you drive through it. Ridges and valleys. And looking at the folding, the folding is very, very close, so that the anticlines and synclines are very tight. They've been squeezed together because it was in the context of plate tectonics, much closer to where the Africa and North America boundary was. So these were squeezed very close, the valley and ridge. And in the valley and ridge, a real useful rule of thumb is that the ridges are the resistant rocks and the valleys are the weak rocks. And what's a good tough resistant type rock?

Deb: Sandstone.

Dr. Bob: Sandstone. And what's a weak old rock?

Deb: Shales. We can get some limestones that dissolve.

Dr. Bob: Shales and limestones. Limestones dissolve, shales just crumble. Even just wetting and drying during the summer can cause shales to break up. And the freeze-thaw, whoa! And when then even a little running water flows across that, the particles are so small they're swept off the surface and erodes very rapidly. So, in your notes you want to put down in the Valley and Ridge, the mountains are the sandstones, and the valleys are best characterized by the shales and limestones. Maybe you'll see a question like that sometime in the future, OK.

Then the Great Valley--now seeing this, this is quite a number of miles wide. This is quite a distance across here, in the shortest distance. I'm not talking about the great length. The valley in Virginia narrows as you get further to the south and the valley opens up as you cross Maryland into Pennsylvania. And this Great Valley in the portion in Virginia and this part of West Virginia sometimes could be referred to as part of the Shenandoah Valley. But it's named other things up in Pennsylvania because the Shenandoah River ends, plunk, right there. The Shenandoah River joins the Potomac and the name's lost. It no longer appears on maps. Now, the Great Valley is topographically a big valley. Now what rock, do you think, is especially vulnerable to chemical weathering to form the Great Valley?

Deb: I would suspect lots of limestone.

Dr. Bob: Lots of carbonates. Limestone being the really weak link in the lot, that's correct.

Deb: Lots of cedar trees.

Dr. Bob: Lots of cedar trees too, because on our little venture this past weekend where I was, we saw that rhododendrons--where were rhododendrons? And what type of soil? Sandstone, because in was in pH, acid. And wherever the soils had a lot of limestone, the pH was much higher, and did you see the rhododendrons? They were gone, they wouldn't volunteer there at all. But elsewhere around the state, they'll find it in the cedar trees. So that leaves then just one more province in West Virginia, and we'll have a little break. Right along the border, now, many people might think that logically the border from West Virginia should have been the shoreline or the margin of the Shenandoah River, but it isn't. It surprises lots of folks. Instead, it's the ridge, and because during the summer months these ridges were so densely wooded that transpiration created what sort of color?

Deb: Lots of bluish, greenish appearances.

Dr. Bob: Yeah. It's very difficult to see things clearly because of the great humidity as a result of transpiration out of the trees--it had a bluish, greenish type tint to it. And it became known as the Blue Ridge. Now, the rocks in the Blue Ridge are geologically much older. They are metamorphic rocks and or some igneous that have been metamorphosed, and they're late Pre-Cambrian in age. They're the oldest rocks in West Virginia.

Deb: And they're not blue!

Dr. Bob: And they're not blue. They're dingy colors. Some of them are very black. Some of them, when they get wet, are greenish-black. So, with that type of background, we have covered a variety of topics, and we need to come up for air. So let's take about a seven-minute break. We'll come in at quarter after, and during this time the facilitators at the sites will distribute the tests. The test is a take-home. You can start paging through it. We are going to go over things in detail. OK now, so facilitators are going to do that. The due date for this test as well as the quiz questions and your unit outline will be the 30 minutes at the end of our last telecast. So that's December 3rd.

Now during the break we're going to put the field-trip directions. We'll talk about it too. But we're going to put the field-trip directions on the overhead. We'll give you the last ones. Let's get up, stretch, and get back about a quarter after or so, 16 after, and finish up tonight's activities. See you then.

(BREAK)

Dr. Bob: Here we are again. Gosh, I'm right wedged in here by the Elmo. Um, but you can still see the suspender so it is still me. I have here in my hand the West Virginia atlas. Now, there are two companies that put out West Virginia atlases. This one happens to be called the "Atlas and Gazetteer." The list price is now 16.95, something like that. And I'm going to put it on the screen here in a second, on the overhead, to show you where we'll be on the field trips, that we get that information put together. And this one is by Delorem. You can find it in some bookstores throughout West Virginia. I've see it at Wal Marts, discounted a couple of bucks. And it's, that's the cheapest place I've seen it. So it is available rather broadly. It's a great book and has topographic maps and if we put it on the overhead now, I want to show you where we are going to be, where we're going to meet.

Here's Buchannon, Route 33, and its extension. And if you haven't driven Route 33, between Buchannon and just about to Elkins, it's quite a--we'll take you there, along some of that route. It's quite a different scene. It's four-lane road, I'm pointing here along the purple route, that's I-79. And from the exit here all the way over to Buchannon, it's all four lane, and as a matter of fact it's four lane till just on the outskirts of Elkins. But at Buchannon, turn south if you're coming from the north or northwest or the northeast. And you want to go--this is a totally voluntary field trip, we're going down to see some natural bridges in West Virginia, and talk about their formation and the geology. You turn at the exit, the center exit. That way you can't miss things in downtown Buchannon. You're on Route 20, and 20 comes down to the south. You go through Buchannon.

You take 20 further to the south, and this is just a couple of miles, and here's the town of French Creek, West Virginia, because for many, the location where we're going is--here's French Creek, and then we're going to go a bit south. And it used to be called the French Creek Wildlife, but now the West Virginia State Wildlife Center. We'll meet there, we'll park extra cars. We will gather together and squeeze so that we have a limited number of vehicles. Again, I stress again, it is voluntary. You don't have to come.

And then just down this road towards Carter, and we will see some of the natural bridges in West Virginia. And many folks don't know we have them. We also have some in Roane County. But this was very close to a good majority of the folks that expressed interest in coming, so we chose this one this particular trip. And then we'll see what time it is, we'll probably--we're going to meet at the West Virginia State Wildlife Center at 10 o'clock. And then we go on this trip to see the bridges, and we'll come back and have lunch in Buchannon. And the lunch will probably be around one at a fast food. There are a variety of fast food places in Buchannon. And then we'll have another two-hour or so trip and I'll show you some of the things east of Buchannon on Route 33.

So that's this Saturday. The weather is supposed to be about in the 50s and the early indications are that we may well get a day without rain. It may be a little overcast. It's a little hard, of course, to predict exactly what's going to occur in the weather, but that's our preliminary information. OK.

Let me put on the overhead the general copy of the test. And you see, you may, you're going to fill in circles. Now the columns are A, B, C, D, and E. So you've got to remember and keep that in mind that these five columns are potential answers A, B, C, D, and E. Then at the bottom of the page, the first round of bonuses, B1 through B4, A, B, C, D, and E.

So, some folks may be more comfortable in saying I'm going to write this at the bottom, too, so that I just don't lose track. The worse possible scenario is somehow I lose track of which column is which and I shift my answers. And then if you believe that the answer to B1 for example is E, just blacken it in, or you can use pencil. It doesn't have to be a type of pencil that can be sensed as a number two or anything like that. As a matter of fact, I might urge you, fill in the blanks last as your last particular exercise so that you have enough time to mull over the answers if you want to change it. And even if you, just as you're about to seal the envelope, you say nope, I want to change my answer. If you want to change your answer, say I don't want E anymore, just put an X through it and give us another answer. OK, no problem. We will cut a master overlay and just set it down and there's no problem at all.

Let's go page by page and talk about this. The first page, lot's of questions are just lots of words. However, in this particular page, I start out with a bonus. You see that each of the 50 multiple choice questions is worth two points each. Each of the four first bonus questions are worth two points each. OK. And in this particular bonus question, I have given you a scale, one centimeter, and I have drawn for you a rough sketch of a fossil and that fits to this B2. OK. All of the bonus questions relate to real situations that you can see and have students ask you questions about here in West Virginia, every one of these bonus questions. OK. And the potential answers for bonus question four are on the next page. I didn't paginate this, but it's pretty clear that these are the four potential answers.

Now in my questions, I give you a lot more information then you necessarily need to answer the question. So don't feel as if, you say: whoa, I don't understand every single term or every single aspect of this. For example, look at these potential answers: the Devonian-Helderberg limestone, the Tuscarora sandstone, and looking further you say: whoops, it was the Silurian-Tuscarora sandstone or the Mississippian-Mauch Chunk red siltstone. You say: I've never seen those. The point is that what I'm getting at in this particular is, you didn't have to see them. In the text of the question, I'm giving you some hints that should lead you to be able to look at these, in this case, five potential answers and say: whoa, I think I can eliminate three answers immediately. Because they just don't, they're great answers but not for this particular question. And then I have to just determine whether it is one of the two best answers within the context. So read the question and identify the problem. What is it that I'm really after in these questions? You know, that's a great deal of the situation and what we try to do with students. Identifying the problem is very difficult for students when we get them to college. We have to start them over again because students are a lot like people. They want to jump and start generating solutions, finding the answer. The right answer is there someplace in a multiple choice. You say: well, wait a minute, what's the real question? A specific example on this, although this isn't one of the questions here, I might say, you see a sign on the roadway and the sign says: bridge freezes before roadway. Now what does that mean? What is the problem? Well, the problem is a safety problem for people driving on the road when the temperatures are low. And when they say the bridge freezes, they're not worried about the superstructure. They're worried about the surface of the bridge, and the surface of the bridge freezes if it has water on it. It'll be ice before the water on the road leading up to the bridge. So think about what is the real question that I'm after.

Well let's fast forward. There are 50 questions and a lot of cartoons. Let's go to the first cartoon page near the back and I'll show you and we'll talk through some of these. And if you want to, of course, you can write on this, there's no problem here at all. But let me show you what the cartoons are for. The first cartoon, and I'll be unable to block off everything, but when it's a cartoon up at the top, the first cartoon obviously must relate to one question. And I have given you four little vignettes that are produced by other students. OK. And when you find this question to match, I'll ask you which one answers the question that I have posed. Which of these students got full credit. So you look at this type of diagram and as a renewal of what we've gone through in the past, what does O stand for and C stand for? Ocean, crust, and continental crust, exactly. And notice the arrows. Sometimes the students didn't draw them real precisely but there's arrows in every case, right? And then what are these little blurbs, what do you think they mean to you? If I had done this in color and I had painted it red, what would you call it? It's probably magma isn't it? Exactly. So what type of mountain do you think this one is? A volcano. Layer upon layer the student is showing it above a magma source. Now, I haven't said which one's the right answer. You have to read the question and find the question. OK.

Figure 3.1 is a question where I have used graph paper and thus little squares, and there's some sort of an outline drawn so you're going to eventually find the question that relates to this 3.1. And if, and I say only if, it has to do with finding area and you are faced with this type, and maybe I would tell you that each square is one square foot in reality in the real channel. This is a channel of a river. Now if you are asked to estimate, estimating is a very important part of using mathematics to answer scientific questions. So what you're going to have to do is estimate. And I always suggest that if you are wrestling and say, oh, these two numbers are so close, which one is it? What's the best rule of thumb? Always go to the higher one. In this case, always round up, because I'm probably posing a question that relates to a hazard. OK. And you're going to want to know best what's the worse case scenario. If a flood, for example, were to wash through this channel. So always round up. And you've got to find some way, maybe, to determine what the cross-sectional area is of that particular cartoon.

OK, here's another one. And these are numbered kind of obtusely because what I've done is, I have taken questions directly from my introductory geology classes, those that I teach at WVU. And I've cut and pasted questions and cartoons to share with you. So these are the same cartoons that my students in Geology I, Physical Geology, are taking right now. Some of these cartoons, my class, maybe some of your sons or daughters, clearly some of your former students, took this morning. I know an ed. student took one of this test this morning.

So this is known as Bowens Reaction Series. I'll just put Bowens Series. Now, you might find it in the book. You might find it in the videos. And this is a good opportunity to remind you that these videos are things that you do on your own. Deb was saying she wished she was back in the classroom. These videos are fantastic. They have little snippets that you could selectively bring out, that it's an excellently done series. And those videos are for your study, review. Sometimes you go over them two or three times, and I understand that. And I understand that that takes time out of an already busy day. You're working all day. Deb, and I, and Tom are working all day and we get together at night. We review the videos and it is a lot of work and a lot to time put in, and we appreciate that. And nothing is always equal. So sometimes you have to look at some videos again and again. I have to admit that I've been watching some additional videos, catching up on some additional geologic information. Last Sunday night for example, there was one on mummies, National Geographic, that was absolutely spectacular. And I'll try to get hold of that and get it out because it had a lot to do with modern climate change and the preservation.

Well, Owens Series. This you might write this down. The temperature increases in the upward direction and it's a general thing. It's hotter up here and cooler down, but it's all still hot. Because this is an appraisal of what might go on in a magma chamber. And in the magma chamber, as temperature falls and things cool, these are the minerals that come out. So that the feldspars are along here, and that's one group. These are all silicates. I just don't happen to show all the silicon. And on this arm these are silicates that have iron and magnesium in them. On this arm there is no iron, no magnesium, but it's a family of minerals that are calcium and sodium silicates. They also have aluminum in them. So all of these have aluminum in them. And then there's just three other silicate minerals that are very important in making rocks. Kays felspar or the potassium felspar. It's also called orthoclase. And then one of the micas, muscovite. And biotite is a mica too. So biotite and muscovite are both having a kinship, but biotite has iron in it and none of these have iron in it down below. Muscovite is white. Biotite is black. And then quartz. And quartz of course is the pure silicate, the chemical equation is SiO₂. The ratio is one silica to two oxygens. So this is Bowens Reaction Series, and as temperature falls, different minerals form.

The next diagram on this particular page--Yellowstone National Park. And there was another series on, I think it was Discovery this week, on the animals, especially the wolves and the coyotes in Yellowstone National Park. But in showing it, they showed all the great geology, the geysers and the reality of the geysers. There was a separate show just on Yellowstone, too, that I think was on Discovery. But in this figure you have a scale. There's a big black arrow--you've got to think about that. What overall is this feature in Yellowstone National Park? Here's a thing called a dome. Here's Old Faithful, showing a geyser. The Caldera Rim. What do you think Yellowstone National Park is if it has a caldera? It's an old but still active volcano. Right! Those here in the studio audiences, they say, are following along although you can't hear them. This is a volcano. And there are ages--note that there is an age here and an age up here, 2 million years, 2.0 million, 1.3 million there, and a third one, and I'll just write right over mine, here is the 2 million line. Here was the 1.3 million line. Here's a 0.8 million years. These are ages based on radiometric dating of the basalt in Yellowstone National Park. And there must be some questions that relate to this story and the fact that it's a volcano. And what might this arrow mean? You know, what's going on with the arrow? A hint on that. Where are the older years? The older ages are out here, aren't they? Where's the younger age? In here. Here's the border. All of this is younger then this material down here. OK.

Now let's go to the next page of cartoons and here's a real big diagram. It's busy--lot's of things on there. I've identified the letter "Q" over here. There's lots of patterns and I wonder if I'm going to ask you what these different patterns are in the context of plate tectonics. How would geologists draw boundaries? This boundary, there are arrows. This boundary, arrows again, but a different pattern. And then over here, there's a whole string or zone of volcanoes. Last in peak, until Mount St. Helens, the last time a volcano erupted in North America on the 48 states, United States that is. And all the way through from northern California all the way through Oregon, Washington, and into British Columbia.

In this diagram, perhaps some of the features are a little bit hard to read but I can do it, I can see this. It reproduced very well. And in this case I would suggest, maybe you want to bring that other page back with Bowens Reaction Series and see that in this case, we're talking about the rock, basalt. And this particular author chose to draw it this way. Talking about 80 percent of something, and 45 and 55 percent of something else, and then you say: oh, this is silica. This is a line of silica. It means that basalt has something like 45 to 55 percent silica available. Riolite has 65 to 75 percent silica. Now, that just means SiO_2, to combine with other elements. OK. And look at these terms: basalt, andicite, and riolite. Looking back in your text, you will find that these are all fine-grained, extrusive igneous rocks. And you say: well, that's almost redundant. I remember that. It's fine grained because it cooled rapidly. They're all extrusive. And then the lower one talks about temperature--high temperature end, lower temperature end. So that at some locations, as in Yellowstone National Park, there are great flows of riolite. And if I asked you at what temperature range was it likely to have occurred, you could use that chart and say: well, I'm going to say it's between 600 and 900 degrees centigrade, because that's what the chart tells me. And you'd get full credit if that's the question that I ask.

Then, the next diagram page, page three, has a sequence of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, and that's pretty much self explanatory. You can show the blast and it's A, B, C, D, E, and then F--a sequence of cartoons. So that's pretty much self explanatory.

This diagram down here is a neat one because students were asked again. The dashed line is the flow before the flood, before urbanization. And then in this case, we're using "T" for time, "Q: for the discharge of the river. And I asked, perhaps, what would the flow look like after urbanization? And you have to determine whether curve A, B, C, or D received full credit. In 2.8, just a simple diagram of an older soil classification scheme--temperature here, cold to hot; temperature on this side, cool to hot down here; precipitation, low to high. It seems like a strange-- it has lots of different directions to it. But it makes sense. This corner down here is hot and wet. This corner up here is hot and dryer. Ok. This corner is cold and dry. So that's a diagram there.

This diagram--the next page, page four--I have then produced four soil profiles, hypothetical soil profiles. And I must have a question associated with it. And it's your task to figure out what the question is and which diagram fits.

And then a series of little questions. Here's a diagram that's a cross section of a channel. Note that the total width across the top, it's 10 meters, isn't it, and five meters deep. These are drainage patterns of rivers. We went through that and talked about how we could look at drainage patterns and how we could number the rivers.

And then down here, the two bottom diagrams are some examples of what could happen along shore lines--man-made features, a groin. The long-shore drift, in your text, is moving in that direction. In this case, the feature is built like this, north the arrow, and the long shore drift is coming from that direction. So, work on these.

The last page is just some short answer questions.

If you have some questions, and are along on the voluntary trip Saturday, see you then. If not, get on the hot line to us and share with us those questions that you have.

We're going to be leaving the air now so that we can get the additional show--someone else's will be coming up. So, see you on the trip, those of you who'll come to the voluntary trip. Work on these questions. Everything will be due to hand in on December 3rd. Take care, see you next time!

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

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Page last revised: February 1999

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