Today's Post
I will explain more of the story behind this later:
I just got back from the geology preceptorial field-trip that I organized, and I'm so pleased with the way it turned out! The sites were great; the weather was awesome (if a little on the chilly side) and Professor Phipps was wonderfully informative and entertaining! Getting up this morning at 7:30 was a bit of a chore (especially since I was up until 2 last night studying for my math midterm tomorrow.) Once we got into Fairmount Park though it was all worth it. We ended up perched on a giant rock outcropping, listening to Prof. Phipps lecture and examining the rock with hand-lenses. We spent a good portion of the morning hiking to various spots around the park and talking about the geology of the area. The man is a genius, and wonderfully adept at developing a story. In our initial classroom sessions he lectured on the commonly accepted story of how the Appalachians formed (among other things). Then today, he structured the entire field trip so that at every stop we saw a new piece of evidence for this accepted story. It's really incredible how much geologists can learn from indirect evidence. They are a bit like astronomers in the way in which they are able to make assertions about materials and events that they have no ability to examine directly (either because events happened in the past, or the evidence is out of reach, or the evidence is spread out over such a large area that its impossible to compile from a single location.). I could rave on and on, but I have a math midterm to study for. Prof. Phipps willing, I will definitely be running that preceptorial again in the future!
I just got back from the geology preceptorial field-trip that I organized, and I'm so pleased with the way it turned out! The sites were great; the weather was awesome (if a little on the chilly side) and Professor Phipps was wonderfully informative and entertaining! Getting up this morning at 7:30 was a bit of a chore (especially since I was up until 2 last night studying for my math midterm tomorrow.) Once we got into Fairmount Park though it was all worth it. We ended up perched on a giant rock outcropping, listening to Prof. Phipps lecture and examining the rock with hand-lenses. We spent a good portion of the morning hiking to various spots around the park and talking about the geology of the area. The man is a genius, and wonderfully adept at developing a story. In our initial classroom sessions he lectured on the commonly accepted story of how the Appalachians formed (among other things). Then today, he structured the entire field trip so that at every stop we saw a new piece of evidence for this accepted story. It's really incredible how much geologists can learn from indirect evidence. They are a bit like astronomers in the way in which they are able to make assertions about materials and events that they have no ability to examine directly (either because events happened in the past, or the evidence is out of reach, or the evidence is spread out over such a large area that its impossible to compile from a single location.). I could rave on and on, but I have a math midterm to study for. Prof. Phipps willing, I will definitely be running that preceptorial again in the future!