Structural Geology

DiscoverSTEM in Butler County, OH, is an annual event held in October during which 8th grade students are invited to participate in a day of interactive, STEM-focussed, workshops and seminars.

Geological Globe Activity

Students used the Geological Globe to evaluate where the plate tectonic boundaries are, and assess what motion is: CONVERGENT, DIVERGENT, or TRANSFORM. Each boundary was colored in a different color on the Globe.

The process of Plate Tectonics was introduced as a process which has fundamentally re-shaped, re-worked, and re-surfaced the Earth throughout geological time. Following boundary identifica- tion, the students discussed which features were associated with those boundaries (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes) and sketched the 2-D nature of the boundary at depth.

Structural Geology

Spherical Protractor Lab Method
Assembled Grid Globe Plot arrival data at globe locations corresponding to latitude and longitude of seismic stations. Closed circles indicate first "upward" motion, open circles indicate first "downward" motion. After plotting arrival data, use the spherical ruler to trace great circles separating regions of open circles from regions of closed circles. Use the protractor to draw a perpendicular to the great circle. To finish delineating open-circle and closed-circle quadrants, use the spherical ruler to draw a great circle through the perpendicular marks. This results in finished Focal Mechanism Solution, showing compressional (shaded, closed circle) quadrants and dilatational quadrants. Clear Hemisphere & Stereonet workboard---The Schmidt Net is a 2D representation of the lower hemisphere of the globe. The clear hemisphere allows visualization by drawing points and great circles (from above exercise) on it, showing how they project down to the workboard.