This activity is designed to enhance student comprehension of mineralogy and its applications by having students read scientific articles from the journal American Mineralogist, answer questions, and discuss the article in class.

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This is an introduction to basic symmetry elements. Students make drawings that show good examples of rotation axes and mirror planes and inversion centers with and without a 2-fold axis. They describe real objects a mirror plane, an inversion center, and 2, 3, 4, and 6-fold axes in 3D. They think about symmetry in atomic structures and indicate which symmetry elements are present in ball and stick models of minerals. Then they count the different kinds of symmetry elements present in wooden blocks and real minerals.

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This summary exercise involves crystal system and point group identification and stereo diagram construction. Students are presented with 5 blocks and for each block they must determine it's point group and crystal system, make stereo diagrams showing all symmetry and faces, and draw the blocks by hand or with SHAPE and label the Miller Indices.

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This complex experimental investigation uses alkali halides (NaCl, KCl, and mixtures of both) to simulate the melting of alkali feldspars which melt at too high of temperatures to work with in lab.
Three hypotheses are tested:

It is possible to crystallize alkali-chloride salts from a magma with any composition between NaCl and KCl.
Because K+ and Na+ do not have the same ionic size, the atomic spacing in alkali chlorides will vary systematically with composition.
Alkali chlorides are equally stable at high (just below liquidus) and low (subsolidus)temperatures.

This project takes more than one class period, depending on how many students are in the class, because there will be lines at the scales, oven, and XRD. It is advisable to introduce the lab in class and have students complete various parts on their own time. There are three main parts.

Part one: Synthesize all alkali halide compositions at high temperature (hopefully above the solvus.
Part two: Put grown crystals back in an oven at lower temperature to see if they will unmix.
Part three: Write a report evaluating and interpreting all results, relevant graphs, and the above three hypothesis.

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This is an introductory laboratory excercise that familiarizes students with the general appearance of fossils and the multiple modes of preservation that are possible.

In this Jigsaw activity, groups of four students are tasked with identifying 20 different minerals (or rocks).

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Most students entering university have some experience with trees growing in a forest ecology. Most student perspectives are that of a northern hemisphere chauvinist. Several other forest structures now exist but although the "present is key to the past," deep-time fossil forests have not always been the same. The goals of the activity are (1) to introduce quantitative ecological measures to fossil benthic (autochthonous)assemblages, (2) Test assemblage relationships using diversity measures, correlation coefficients, and simple multivariate statistical analyses, and (3)Reconstruct an autochthonous fossil community in space, demonstrating that ancient community structure differs from the Recent.

These lecture notes discuss the use of three component systems in metamorphic petrology. Common triangular plots used in metamorphic rocks are presented with annotated ternary diagrams. The presentation includes four criteria for reducing the number of components in a system to a workable number. There is also discussion of the issue of lost information when reducing the number of components in a system. This resource is part of the Teaching Petrology collection. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/petrology03/index.html

This set of lecture notes introduces metamorphic grade and type (contact, regional, cataclastic, hydrothermal, burial, shock), and classification of metamorphic rocks. Further topics include texture, protolith, bulk chemical composition, and metamorphic facies. The notes contain definitions and a small number of instructional illustrations. This resource is part of the Teaching Petrology collection. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/petrology03/index.html

Students identify individual polyhedra in a variety of diagrams and answer questions about shared oxygens in diagrams of common silicate structures.

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This chapter is concerned primarily with how the content of a mineralogy course can be organized so that the students are more active and conscientious learners. This chapter is divided into three sections: Section I briefly describes the fundamentals of cooperative learning: why it's important and what is essential. Section II describes a variety of cooperative learning structures and their uses. Section III provides more detailed descriptions of cooperative learning activities specifically for a mineralogy class.

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In this exercise, students use SHAPE, a computer graphics program, to draw the external morphology (faces) of crystals. SHAPE will draw any single crystal and most twins and epitaxial intergrowths. Students make several crystal drawings by entering the crystal axis lengths and angles, the symbol for the crystal class, and one face of each form. The crystal can be rotated and scaled. Students print out their drawings and label every face with the correct Miller Indices.

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In this lab exercise, students investigate taphonomic processes operating on a large vertebrate carcass (whitetail deer: Odocoileus virginianus) in a temperate, humid, terrestrial environment (i.e., central Ohio). Prior to the lab, students read the 1991 review article on terrestrial vertebrate accumulations by A. K. Behrensmeyer. Once in the field, they familiarize themselves with the locality and note the state of the carcass and the position of any disarticulated portions of the beast. Using the stake flags they mark the location of all the elements of the carcass. Next, using the Brunton compasses and the measuring tape, create a map of the site. They then reassemble all the elements of the carcass on the tarp and identify all of the skeletal elements. Finally, the students compare the disarticulated skeleton with a control carcass placed in a wire mesh cage designed to exclude any macro-scavengers. In the lab, student synthesize their results and respond to a series of questions related to vertebrate taphonomy and the quality of the fossil record.

This virtual lab activity uses Virtual Microscope to help students create their own ranked lists of diagnostic properties for the "Big Nine" silicate minerals/groups, which includes quartz, muscovite, biotite, plagioclase feldspar, potassium feldspar, clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene, amphibole, and olivine. Students synthesize all of their optical mineralogy skills and utilize reliable resources to complete this lab.

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Students interact with an applet to experiment with waveform interference. The activity should be performed in a computer laboratory, with each student at a workstation. They should each be provided with a copy of the following handout, available in Word and pdf format, which they should fill in as they proceed through the exercise. At the completion of the exercise, they should hand it in for grading.

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This activity is a directed reading exercise focused on papers that have been key to our understanding of the major source contributors to subduction zone volcanic rocks.

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Activity 1: Small groups of students are given 4 rock hand samples per group (granite, conglomerate, sandstone, phyllite). They are told that the four rocks represent the 3 basic categories of rocks, defined by geologists based on processes of formation. Based on their observations, students decide which two rocks formed from similar processes. Students receive no prior instruction, and thus need to use their observations and their current conceptions of how rocks form in order to make and justify their grouping. After small groups have completed their grouping, they report their decision. A full-class discussion ensues, revealing differences among the groups, from which emerge the three rock types and basic processes of formation for sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks.

Activity 2: Students are given 3 more rocks to put in the appropriate groups, then challenged to draw the rock cycle using their groupings of seven total rocks.

We will begin with a review of what minerals are inferred to be in the core and what minerals are inferred to be in the mantle. Students will then sketch what they think the core-mantle boundary looks like. Students will make observations of samples of pallasite (identify texture and compositions). Next using phase diagrams (e.g., Fe, olivine, post-perovskite) determine the temperatures and pressures at which these minerals might be stable at the core-mantle boundary. What is the coordination number for these inferred phases at this boundary? Are the phases liquid, solid or both? Next assess and describe how P and S wave velocities change at the core-mantle boundary.

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This is an x-ray diffraction analysis of six sand samples and comparison with hand specimens. Students look at each of the six samples under the binocular microscope and note such useful properties as number of minerals, cleavage/fracture, color, shape, grain size, roundness, and degree of sorting. Then they grind up small amounts of each sample and mount them on glass slides for X-ray. Students write all sample descriptions and X-ray analysis results in their lab notebook. Then they identify the minerals in each sample, determine where they are from, and write a report summarizing all results.

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