Ge 101, Introduction to Geology and Geochemistry

Syllabus

Get your syllabus (revised 9/23/08). You can't tell the players without a syllabus. Also, here is the class Collaboration policy.

Field Trip

The class features a mandatory field trip. Get this on your calendars now: we leave Friday October 17, at noon, we return Sunday October 19 at 7 PM. You can preview the field trip in Google Earth, if you like.

Geochemistry Textbook

This year we are using a regular geochemistry textbook, but there is also an online reference, Geochemistry by Bill White. If this link to the site at Cornell causes trouble, I will set up a local mirror. Note that this is a draft of the book and contains a number of errors. Here are the corrections and errata I am aware of. If you see a mistake I missed, anything from a typo to a misnumbered equation reference to a science mistake, tell me.

Lecture Notes

The lecture notes are posted here in advance in the hope that this means you will be armed to the teeth with tough questions by the time you get to class. The full set of lectures is here, but until the day of each lecture what is posted may be last year’s version. Only after the lecture are these notes final and definitive. I recommend you make sure that eventually you have a set of final notes downloaded on the day of or after each lecture. Older browsers may attempt to display rather than download the powerpoint files: in Windows, right-click to get the download menu, choose save file, on Macintosh, option-click to get the download menu, choose save file. Warning: some of these are big files, use caution before downloading over slow connection.

Lecture Notes (Check syllabus for when each lecture is expected to be covered; they may be out of order)

• Prefatory Material
• Lecture 1a: Geologic Time
• Lecture 1b: Plate Tectonics, Geodynamic setting of major rock suites
• Lecture 2a: Igneous classification, mid-ocean ridges
• Lecture 2b: Hotspots
• Lecture 3: Subduction and volcanology
• Lecture 4: Chemical thermodynamics, melting, major elements, mineralogy
• Lecture 5: Structural Geology
• Lecture 6: Geomorphology
• Lecture 7: Orogeny, continental dynamics and regional metamorphism
• Lecture 8a: Stratigraphy and Paleomagnetism
• Lecture 8b: California
• Lecture 9: Weathering and sedimentary rocks
• Lecture 10: Cosmochemistry: origin of nuclei, solar system, and earth
• Lecture 11: Geochemical classification of elements and gross differentiation of the Earth
• Lecture 12: Radioactivity
• Lecture 13: Mixing and Box Models
• Lecture 14: Stable Isotopes
• Lecture 15: Chemical Oceanography
• Lecture 16: Atmospheric Chemistry
• There is no lecture 17. There never has been.
• Lecture 18: Chemical Geodynamics: lithophiles
• Lecture 19: Chemical Geodynamics: noble gases

Cumulative Index of Lecture Notes

The index PDF is complete as of a couple years, but pages may have moved around a bit, so check nearby pages.

Problem Sets

• Problem Set 1 as PDF file.

• Problem Set 2 as PDF file or MS Word file.

• Problem Set 3 as PDF file or MS Word file.

• Problem Set 4 as PDF file or MS Word file.

List of Review Questions

To prepare for the final, consider the following List of review questions and info about the final.