Measuring the Inclination and Declination of the Earth's magnetic field with a smartphone part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Avradip Ghosh, University of Houston-University Park
The poles of the Earth's magnetic field are not precisely aligned with the geographic north and south poles and, in fact, vary continuously. This activity introduces to students the Earth's magnetic ...

Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Students analyze data to study the motion of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. From GPS data, students detect relative motion between the plates in the San Andreas fault zone--with and without earthquakes. To get to that discovery, they use physical models to understand the architecture of GPS, from satellites to sensitive stations on the ground. They learn to interpret time series data collected by stations (in the spreading regime of Iceland), to cast data as horizontal north-south and east-west vectors, and to add those vectors head-to-tail.Students then apply their skills and understanding to data in the context of the strike-slip fault zone of a transform plate boundary. They interpret time series plots from an earthquake in Parkfield, CA to calculate the resulting slip on the fault and (optionally) the earthquake's magnitude.

Relative Dating with Art part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Jennifer Cholnoky, Skidmore College
This activity asks students to make observations of an artwork and to deduce the sequence of events or processes that occurred during the creation of the piece.

Feldspar Minerals and Triangle Diagrams part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students learn how to read a triangle or ternary diagram. They determine physical properties of feldspars and interpret two ...

Mt. St. Helens Topographic Profiles part of Geodesy:Activities
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1-1.5 hours to complete. Students study topographic maps of Mt. St. Helens before and after the eruption of May 18, 1980, and draw two topographic ...

Tracking Sea Level and Paleoenvironments with Fossils part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Pete Berquist, Virginia Peninsula Community College
Students use the Paleobiology Database Navigator to examine changes in sea level in southeastern North America throughout the Cretaceous, Paleogene, and Neogene Periods. They will plot the change in distribution of ...

Getting started with Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope Consortium
Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry method uses overlapping images to create a 3D point cloud of an object or landscape. It can be applied to everything from fault scarps to landslides to topography. This ...

Geological Mapping of a Virtual Landscape part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Mark Helper, The University of Texas at Austin
This virtual mapping exercise is part video game, part map prediction and interpretation. You will navigate a virtual landscape to "collect" outcrops and their field notes, recording your observations on ...

Karst Hydrogeology: A virtual field introduction using Google Earth and GIS part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Rachel Bosch, Northern Kentucky University
Students will have the opportunity to select and virtually explore the hydrogeology and geomorphology of a karst landscape using Google Earth, lidar data-sourced DEM(s) and geologic maps, and GIS software (QGIS) ...

Geology of Yosemite Valley part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Nicolas Barth, University of California-Riverside
This is a four-part module designed to be flexible in duration and student grade-level. (1) Geology of Yosemite Valley Virtual Field Trip. A 43-stop web-based Google Earth tour with embedded views, hyperlinked ...