Guided-DiscoveryActivitiesforTeachingStressandStrain.docVIP

Guided-Discovery Activities for Teaching Stress and Strain Ann Bykerk-Kauffman California State University, Chico abykerk-kauffman@csuchico.edu Type of Activity : Pencil-and-paper guided-discovery worksheet Brief description: Helping students discover and come to understand essential and useful aspects of stress and strain theory without asking them to derive the theory. Context Type and level of course in which I use this activity or assignment: undergraduate required structural geology course for majors Skills and concepts that students must have mastered before beginning the activity: Students should have seen enough examples of patterns of structures in various tectonic settings (e.g. thrust faults tend to have gentle dips but strike-slip faults tend to be steep) so that they begin to wonder why these patterns exist and thus can see the usefulness of studying stress and strain theory. How the activity is situated in my course: This activity is one of many combined homework assignments/in-class activities that students do over the course of the semester. Goals of the Activity or Assignment Content/concepts goals for this activity: Introduction to stress and strain (exploration of the stress equations, Mohr circle, Coulomb fracture criterion, Anderson’s theory of faulting, pure vs. simple shear); exploration of these concepts, discovering some of their properties and usefulness. Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity: moving from xyz 3-dimensional space to ?n/?s space and back again, applying theory to a real situation. Other skills goals for this activity: peer teaching, oral communication of ideas. Description To prepare for each activity, students listen to a brief lecture on the basics of stress and strain theory. Short summaries of these lectures are included in the course packet. In class, students answer guided-discovery questions on worksheets. They perform simple calculations, make graphs, draw sketches and write summaries of their discover