COURSE OUTCOMES

Students taking this course will be able to:

• Understand the major theories involved the origin of Earth, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, interior and exterior earth processes, and the rock cycle.
• Identify and categorize minerals by their physical and chemical characteristics.
• Understand occurrences of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, and identify.them from their physical and chemical properties
• Understand and describe the causes and types of weathering and soil formation, erosion, material transportation, mass wasting processes reshaping the Earth surface and relation to people.
• Understand geologic time including relative and absolute dating principles and techniques, define the three types of unconformities.
• Understand the hydrologic cycle including defining all stream and groundwater processes and discuss groundwater withdrawal and contamination.
• Define and describe glacier, desert, shoreline, and ocean-floor environments, their features, landforms, deposits, and processes occurring in these environments.
• Define and describe active and passive continental margins.
• Define continental drift, describe and define plate tectonics, the evidence to support it, the types of boundaries, and causes and explain how paleomagnetism relates to plate tectonics.
• Define and understand divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries.
• Explain what causes earthquakes and tsunamis, and how to locate an earthquake’s focus and epicenter.  Explain the hazards of earthquakes and tsunamis to man and assess man’s prediction capabilities for these disasters.
• Relate how plate tectonics explain the formation of fold belt and fault block mountains and associated structures. Describe and define deformation, folds and faults, and techniques used in structural geology, define deformation, including force, tensional stress, compressional stress, shear stress, and strain.
• Interpret geologic features and landforms from topographic maps and distinguish three-dimensional rock structures, Determine the strike and dip of a rock layer            
• Understand and describe energy and mineral resources, including origin, uses, and environmental consequences.