Spanish Peaks, Colorado, as viewed in late spring from the north, looking south. Photo by Vince Cronin.

Home page for the Physical Geology Lab (Geo 1405 The Dynamic Earth)

About This Course

This course is a university-level introductory laboratory science course.

Purpose Of This Course

This course is an attempt to explore and summarize the best scientific understanding of Earth's ~4.6 billion year age, evolution, composition, and major dynamic systems, as that understanding exists in the geoscience community based on published peer-reviewed scientific literature. We want you to become literate with respect to the Earth sciences.

This course will be conducted face-to-face at Baylor University's Waco campus.

• All lab-section meetings will be held in the BSB room E406. You must attend the lab section in which you are enrolled. You are expected to study the assigned material (including the assigned lab activities) in the lab manual before attending your weekly lab-session meeting.

The laboratory is designed as "flipped" learning experiences. Students are expected to study the assigned texts and work through the assigned laboratory activities before coming to thel ab meetings. Lab meetings are for completing assigned work that each student has already begun. It is the teacher's responsibility to organize work that a student is assigned to do, and to provide guidance and assistance upon request. Student learning occurs primarily through working through the assignments.

How To Contact Your Graduate Teaching Assistant

• Lab Section B (Tues 2:40-4:35 PM): Sanjukta Dhar — email Sanjukta_Dhar1@baylor.edu
• Lab Section C (Tues 4:40-6:35 PM): Sanjukta Dhar — email Sanjukta_Dhar1@baylor.edu
• Lab Section D (Wed 12:20-2:15 PM): Toluwaleke Ajayi (AJ) — email toluwaleke_ajayi1@baylor.edu
• Lab Section E (Wed 2:30-4:25 PM): Toluwaleke Ajayi (AJ) — email toluwaleke_ajayi1@baylor.edu
• Lab Section J (Thurs 2:40-4:35 PM): Vinothan Sivapalan — email vinothan_sivapalan1@baylor.edu

Required Laboratory Textbook

	You need to have acquired the following textbook and be ready to work with it before the first laboratory meetings (August 31-September 2).
	AGI/NAGT Laboratory Manual in Physical Geology , 12th edition (paper copy ONLY) Print Lab Manual ISBN: 9780135836972

You MUST acquire your very own personal copy of the PAPER VERSION of the Lab Manual 12th edition.

• You can't get by with a subscription to the eText of the Lab Manual.
• You can't rent the Lab Manual, because you will be required to write-on and tear-out the lab-activity pages to submit for credit.
• You can't share a copy of the lab manual and scan the activity pages to submit for credit, because that would violate copyright.

You can acquire the Lab Manual either from the Baylor Bookstore, by ordering it directly from Pearson Higher Education , or through other online book vendors like Amazon

If you need any further clarification of this list of required resources, you can email, text, or call Professor Cronin. His phone number was given in an announcement published through Canvas on August 9, 2020.

Lab Safety Information

1. Your safety during laboratory sessions in Geo 1405 is your responsibility alone.
2. You are stongly encouraged to be inoculated with one of the three COVID vaccines that are available at no cost to you on campus and at local pharmacies (e.g., CVS, Walgreen's, HEB). For more information, go to https://www.baylor.edu/vaccine.
3. If you are feeling ill on the day of a lab meeting, (a) do not attend lab while feeling ill, (b) notify your graduate teaching assistant in a timely manner telling them why you are absent, and (c) get tested for COVID and, if appropriate, the flu.
4. The teachers (a group that includes Dr. Lyndsay DiPietro, Dr. Vince Cronin, Sharon Browning, and the graduate teaching assistants) have the authority to enforce the guidelines and policies that relate to this laboratory course, including requiring non-compliant or non-cooperative students to leave the lab room immediately.
5. You are required to wear an effective facial mask over your nose and mouth at all times while attending all GEO 1405 lab meetings. This is required of all students and teachers in the GEO 1405 labs, regardless of their vaccine status.
6. You should maintain a sufficient (~1 meter) physical distance between you and other humans while in lab.
7. You should wash or disinfect your hands before participating in lab meetings and as necessary during lab. You should disinfect your work area as necessary when you leave it, making sure that it is sufficiently dry so that it does not damage any lab books or lab activity/response sheets.
8. You are required to take care for the safety needs of your classmates and teachers in connection with all lab meetings and activities.
9. We will follow the policies and guidelines promulgated by Baylor University and the Geosciences Department in response to the COVID pandemic as the minimum baseline requirements.

Tentative Lab Schedule

The lab schedule is subject to revision. Reload this page in your browser to be certain that you are viewing the most current information.

To complete these labs, you will usually need a ruler with a metric scale (cm, mm) and a smartphone with a calculator app or an inexpensive scientific calculator ( e.g., Texas Instruments TI-30Xa Scientific Calculator, or Casio FX-260SOLAR11 Scientific Calculator — both available at big-box stores for ~$10 or less). You will always need something you can use to write LEGIBLY and CLEARLY on the lab activity sheets. Some lab activities require that you use colored pencils/pens.

Grades and Grading

The 75% Rule

The Baylor University College of Arts and Sciences has had a rule for many years that a student automatically fails a course in which they are not present for at least 75% of the lecture and lab meetings. This course employs this grading criterion.

In addition to the attendance requirement, a student can only earn a grade above an "F" in this course by completing and submitting (on time) at least 75% of the weekly labs. "Complete" means that 100% of the assigned lab activities are completed and submitted online, with the original student worksheets submitted directly to the graduate teaching assistant, and the end-of-lab quiz is completed online.

About Accessing Your Grades

Grades for the lab part of the course are accessed through the Canvas account for each specific lab section, and are posted by the corresponding graduate teaching assistant.

If you have any questions or comments about this site or its contents, drop an email to the humble webmaster .
All of the original content of this website is © 2021 by Vincent S. Cronin