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Request for Undergraduate Physical Volcanology Course Materials
From: Eric Grosfils <EGROSFILS@xxxxxxxxxx>Request for Undergraduate Physical Volcanology Course Materials
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Hello,
I am writing to ask those of you currently teaching Volcanology courses if you would be willing to share teaching materials.
I am in the process of
developing a new lab course in Physical Volcanology for intermediate
level geology undergraduates at Pomona College. The class will likely
include students fresh
out of an introductory geology class (provided that they have taken
Calculus) all the way up to senior students with advanced course work
under their belt.
The undergraduates I
teach are quite talented by and large, but like many of their peers they
are often not as quantitatively adept as they need to be. An explicit
goal of the course
is thus to increase their ability to apply quantitative methods as they
assess geological questions. In my department we have done this within
our curriculum recently using shallow exploration geophysics, but now we
want to develop something similarly grounded
in quantitative analysis but focused instead on problems in basic
physical volcanology. For example, simple Mogi-style coding in Excel
could be used to frame analytical predictions of uplift response to
reservoir inflation. A scaled sandbox-style analogue
model could then be used to simulate the uplift and document the
structural deformation that occurs, and finally students could be
introduced to assessing what more can be learned using a simple
numerical modeling tool (e.g. COMSOL Multiphysics). This sequence,
focused on elucidating magma reservoir behavior, would enable them to
explore the links between analytical predictions, analogue observations
and continuum mechanics in a first order quantitative fashion.
My hope is that those
of you who already teach a tested volcanology course might be willing to
share syllabi, thoughts about textbooks (pro and con), examples of
effective and engaging
homework and lab exercises, etc. Right now no idea is too big or too
small! I have plenty of ideas of my own, and things that I definitely
want to introduce for my specific students given the framework of our
degree program, but anything you can suggest or
provide that might help enrich the content of the course (and/or reduce
the extent to which I reinvent the proverbial wheel!) could only help
and would be deeply appreciated.
I can be reached by anyone who wishes to share ideas at egrosfils@xxxxxxxxxx.
Thanks in advance!
Eric
---------------------------------------
Dr. Eric B. Grosfils
Minnie B. Cairns Memorial Professor---------------------------------------
Dr. Eric B. Grosfils
Geology Department, Pomona College
185 E. Sixth Street
Claremont, CA 91711
Tel: 909-621-8673
Fax: 909-621-8552
Email: egrosfils@xxxxxxxxxx
http://geology.pomona.edu
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