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GEOL 101: Physical Geology

Geology in the News

 Use this guide to get started with your "Geology in the News" assignment for Prof Nagurny's Geology 101 class. 

  • For this assignment, you'll need to locate popular media coverage of topics related to earth science/geology. 
    • As the assignment states,  "You will collect news articles from newspapers or news magazines like Time, the New York Times, or your hometown newspaper. Examples might include articles on natural disasters like a floods or volcanic eruptions or geology-related environmental problems. Alternatively, you may see an article on the price of copper in the Wall Street Journal that you could relate to geology."  
    • Use the resources linked on the "Finding Geology in the News" tab to search for mentions of earth science in the news media. 
    • Searching tips:
      • It's much easier to search for something if you have a sense of what you're searching for! Take some time to think about possible geology topics that you might come across, or brainstorm different aspects of earth science, and then use those keywords to search for interesting news articles. You can of course always try searching for "geologist" or "geology" but you might find more options (and maybe more interesting options!) if you search more specifically, such as "glaciers" or "sediment" or "fossils."
      • If you don't have any idea what possible geology topics might be of interest to you, try taking a look at an introductory level textbook (such as this free Open Textbook "Physical Geology") and browse the table of contents for topics of interest to you, or even skim the Wikipedia article for Geology to get ideas!  You can also use the books listed on the "Books & Encyclopedias" tab to help you get ideas. 

 

  • In addition to writing up a brief description of the article that you find, you're going to need to describe how the article relates to the field of geology or earth science.
    • From the assignment: "describe how the article relates to geology as if you are explaining it to someone with no geology background.

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