Fulfilling promises.
I said I'd tell you about the Liptrap trip that I was on a few weekends ago, and it's been almost a month. So, without further ado, I've started this article with the daggiest photo of me ever (that's me on the RIGHT, in case you're wondering). There's no mistaking a demonstrator on school fieldtrips these days. I think it's funny that digital camera image sensors overload with the new high vis colours.
Anyway, the lesser (in length only) of two second year fieldtrips is to Cape Liptrap, which is on the southwest coast of Wilson's Promontory in the Gippsland area of Victoria (map coming if I remember). They go there to learn about structural geology, about which I have some fairly misinformed opinions that no one would really like to read at this point.
We next go to Cape Liptrap proper, which is on the other side of the peninsula from Waratah Bay. From there, we scare all the faint-hearted city slickers and lash them down a cliff - look for the little people on the beach below. I took this picture from about half way down the cliff walk. Once down at the beach level, we teach them about strike and dip, which is a way of graphically representing the orientation of layered rocks and other planar and linear features. 
This beach is particularly good for teaching strike and dip because there are a ton of really good surfaces to use for measure-ments, thus:
The Monash School of Geosciences runs a number of fieldtrips to familiarise its students with the practical aspects of geology. As a field of study, there's probably little that needs to be taught at the university level to make useful geologists in the real world, but such is life nowadays that everyone and his or her respective dog must attend university for increasingly less apparent reasons.
Anyway, the lesser (in length only) of two second year fieldtrips is to Cape Liptrap, which is on the southwest coast of Wilson's Promontory in the Gippsland area of Victoria (map coming if I remember). They go there to learn about structural geology, about which I have some fairly misinformed opinions that no one would really like to read at this point.
The day starts at a coastal cliff in which there are lots of folds and faults and rock fouled to buggary. The students slowly pace along the cliff and make a schematic cross section detailing the major features, which they later find out comprise a shear zone. A shear zone is a region of highly smooshed rock that are so stretched out and faulted that there's no original textures left, just a erosionally vulnerable set of what appear to be layered rocks. This cliff is in a place called Waratah Bay, which you can see on this Google Map near the town of Walkerville.
We next go to Cape Liptrap proper, which is on the other side of the peninsula from Waratah Bay. From there, we scare all the faint-hearted city slickers and lash them down a cliff - look for the little people on the beach below. I took this picture from about half way down the cliff walk. Once down at the beach level, we teach them about strike and dip, which is a way of graphically representing the orientation of layered rocks and other planar and linear features. 
This beach is particularly good for teaching strike and dip because there are a ton of really good surfaces to use for measure-ments, thus:After getting a handle on strike and dip, which is a challenge for some, we walk for about 20 minutes, at low tide, along the beach to the next stop, which is a mound at an otherwise inaccessible area of the Cape. It has been named Fold Stack for the trip. At Fold Stack, the students fan out and begin sketching the stack and noting all its major features. Sketching in geology is probably one of the only bastions of elementary art class that is elevated to professional status. If you like using pencil crayons, sketching, and drawing, geology may be the "science" for you. 
Fold Stack looks a little something like this (left). There's big folds here that make teaching all the structural malarky related to folding easy to visualise. We were lucky with the weather this trip and only had enough drizzle on Saturday to completely disintegrate everyone's first drafts. Heh. Sunday was, well, sunny. Off on another field trip this and next weekend. I'll post about that later.
Fold Stack looks a little something like this (left). There's big folds here that make teaching all the structural malarky related to folding easy to visualise. We were lucky with the weather this trip and only had enough drizzle on Saturday to completely disintegrate everyone's first drafts. Heh. Sunday was, well, sunny. Off on another field trip this and next weekend. I'll post about that later.TTFN
posted by Kyle @ 06:20
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