A Word from the Instructor
Chuck Langston
Group Photo at Dante's View
Geology 4701/6701
The Spring Field Trip is an annual event at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Memphis. This year (Spring 2002), the department decided to give it a geophysical flavor by letting me take a class of 7 (+1 visiting) graduate students and 3 undergraduates out to Death Valley and the Shoshone, California, area. The plan was to take some gravity and magnetic data at my favorite field haunt in Tecopa Valley.
In addition to learning some geophysical field techniques, the class toured the area discovering the geological wonders of Death Valley National Park. They were an eclectic mix of hard-core geophysicists (What's a rock and can I write an equation for it?) to Mississippi embayment field geologists (THIS is a rock? Why is it so hard?). Seriously, though, the group worked great together and we all learned new things about geophysics, geology and the spectacular landforms of Death Valley. And as instructor, I was very pleased to see all involved exercise their spirits as well as minds and bodies to get the most out of this group learning experience.
In the weeks before Spring Break, we met as a seminar course and studied the literature on the geophysical and geological framework of North America. Students prepared oral presentations and written abstracts on each subject for classroom discussion.
The class was required to self-organize into working groups before the trip to deal with camping equipment, meals, the gravity meter, the magnetometer and GPS system, and Digital Elevation Models of the area.
We flew from Memphis to Las Vegas and rented 2 Ford Explorers as field vehicles. We spent the first 2 nights at the Shoshone campground and then moved over to the SHEAR facility maintained by the University of New Orleans.
The trip schedule was heavy on field trips but we also did a lot of local hiking to look at rocks and to get the experience of walking and climbing in desert terrane.
After returning, the class, once again, had to self-organize to analyze the data collected and to build these web pages. They did an outstanding job.
May 8, 2002
C.A. Langston