Course news:
Exam II has been graded and will be handed back at the end of class on October 20. The distribution of grades is shown below.
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Your instructor got so carried away with dead reptiles on Thursday, October 8, that he forgot to cover the Chinese creation story on the syllabus for that day. There won't be time for it on Tuesday, October 13, so let's forget about it.
Exam II will be on Thursday, October 15, as shown on the syllabus and course schedule. This is just a reminder.
Exam I has been graded and will be, or was, handed back at the end of class on September 24. The distribution of grades is shown below.
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A link to a new page on isotopes has been added for Lecture 9. This is not new material for which students are responsible on Exam I. It may help students understand Lecture 9 and thus help them prepare for Exam I. However, it is not material about which questions will be asked on Exam I.
The syllabus for this section of GEOL 1122 is now available as a PDF.
Histograms of grades from Fall 2008 Exams 1 and 2 are shown below solely as an illustration of past performance.
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Persons withdrawing before midterm will be given Ws, not WFs.
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| Schedule for Railsback's GEOL 1122 for Fall 2009 | |||
| Lxr | Date | Topic or Business | Reading* |
| Part I. Basic Materials in Historical Geology | |||
| 1 | 8/18/09 | Introduction; Minerals | Syllabus (read it!); 31-35, Introduction to GEOL 1122; Basics of geology; More basics of geology; Trends in silicate minerals |
| 2 | 8/20/09 | Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks | 35-37; 44-46; CS #1 |
| 3 | 8/25/09 | Sedimentary Rocks, and Fossils | 37-44; 99-102 [106-123]; 47-53; Weathering-to-lithification diagram; CS #2 |
| 4 | 8/27/09 | Strata and Stratigraphy | 8-10; 142-147; "Possible causes of sea-level change"; CS #3 |
| 5 | 9/01/09 | Structural Geology & Plate Tectonics | 178; 187-193; 202-204; Structural Geology diagram; Divergent plate boundaries sketches;
Convergent plate boundaries sketches |
| Part II. Basic Principles and Geologic Time | |||
| 6 | 9/03/09 | Goals and Theories | "What is Science?"; A quick assignment; CS #4 |
| 7 | 9/08/09 | Working Through Time | 3-5; CS #6 |
| 8 | 9/10/09 | Correlative and Relative Dating | 142-144; Lecture cross-sections 1, 2, 3, and 4, Practice cross-sections and their key; CS #7 |
| 9 | 9/15/09 | Absolute Dating | 137-139; [28-29 on isotopes]; Isotopes; Half-life measurement; A table of radioactive pairs; CS #9 |
| 10 | 9/17/09 | Age of the Earth & Geologic Time Scales | 136-137; 10-12; 145-147; Lead isotope diagram |
| - | 9/22/09 | Exam I | - - |
| Part III. Biological Evolution of the Earth | |||
| 11 | 9/24/09 | Explanations of Biological Evolution | 152-158; Modern Example 1; Modern Example 2; Modern Example 3; [Modern human evolution] Artificial Selection 1; Artificial Selection 2 Artificial Selection 3 |
| 12 | 9/29/09 | Mechanics of Biological Evolution | 158-172; WWW Life ; CS #10 |
| 13 | 10/01/09 | Precambrian Life | 256-261; 269-275; Cells, [Prokaryotes], Cellular Evolution (Small printer-friendly version); Intra-cellular symbiosis; An endosymbiotic experiment; Slime Molds; A summary of early evolution; CS #11 |
| 14 | 10/06/09 | Evolution of Vertebrates I | 70-73; 321-325; 327-330; 351-356; Chordate Evolution (jpg) or Chordate Evolution (pdf) |
| 15 | 10/08/09 | Evolution of Vertebrates II | 382-390 (incl. ESS 16-1); 379-380; 411-414, ESS 17-1; CS #13 |
| 16 | 10/13/09 | Evolution of Mammals & Hominids | 434-437; 484-493; Hominid Cranial Sizes ; Primate Brain Structure; Primate Evolution jpeg or pdf ; A short essay |
| - | 10/15/09 | Exam II | |
| Part IV. Environmental Evolution of the Earth | |||
| 17 | 10/20/09 | The Origin of the Universe | 244-247; "In Defense of the Big Bang"; ["Spectra, Absorption, and the Red Shift"]; ["Doppler Effect & Red Shift"]; ["Gravitational Lensing"]; ["Further Evidence"]; |
| 18 | 10/22/09 | Evolution of the Earth | 247-256; 183-184; 284-286; 362-364; maps in cover and on 265, 289, 305, 343, 357, 358, 375, 391, 405, 415, 431, & 441; WWW: "The Fall Line" and "The Fall Line in Georgia"; Phanerozoic tectonic events in eastern North America. CS #14 and 15 |
| 19 | 10/27/09 | The Evolution of the Ocean & Atmosphere | 249; 261; 275-280; 219-229; Phanerozoic environmental time line as pdf or jpeg; [Bob Berner's box models]; [Boron and ancient PCO2]; CS #16 |
| 20 | 10/29/09 | Phanerozoic Sea Level and Climate | 144-147; "Possible causes of sea-level change" |
| 21 | 11/03/09 | The Cenozoic | 440-443 [232-234 on isotopes] Isotopes; Cenozoic O isotope records; ["O Isotopes", Glaciers]; CS #12 |
| 22 | 11/05/09 | Quaternary Glaciation | 104-106; 461-470; [Glaciers]; Pulse of Pleistocene, a CO2 record |
| 23 | 11/10/09 | Holocene I - Greenhouse effect & global warming | Lecture 23 outline; WWW pages on carbon dioxide |
| 24 | 11/12/09 | Holocene II - Change of the Earth Surface | "Changing the World" |
| 25 | 11/17/09 | Holocene III - Some 20th-21st Century Environmental Issues | 503-507; 514-519; Web pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, |
| 26 | 11/19/09 | The Holocene IV - why I, II, and III happened | Lecture Illustration #1 , #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, and #8; CS #20 . |
| 27 | 12/01/09 | The Holocene V - Alternatives for the Late Holocene | Human lifestyles; Lifestyle effects; US energy consumption; World energy consumption; Human footprint data. |
| 28 | 12/03/09 | Summary and Review | The Land Ethic Revisited; A time line; Primate brain volumes revisited |
| - | 12/08/09 | Friday | UGA follows a Friday schedule on thisTuesday. |
| - | 12/15/09 | Final Exam 8:00am-11:00am Room 200A GG | - - |
*Notes regarding readings:
All readings are in Stanley's Earth System History (3rd edn), except for web pages, which are labeled "WWW", and for numbers labeled "CS", which are nunbers for stories in Creation Stories from around the World.
Pages in brackets are not required reading, and they will not be used to generate exam questions. They are suggested reading that may make lecture material easier to understand.
Reading assignments do not include "Earth System Shift" ("ESS") inserts unless specifically noted.
Reading assignments include all figures to which reference is made, even if the figures fall outside the page range indicated.
GEOL 1122 webpages:
How to do better in GEOL 1122 or How to study for college exams.
A little bit of advice for first-semester freshmen.
A letter that student athletes can print out and use to request that their grades by reported to an advisor in the athletic program. After filling all the blanks, they should give the letter to Dr. Railsback.
Past grade distributions in Railsback's GEOL 1122 lecture sections.
Questions asked frequently or recently by 1122 students, and the answers to those questions.
Part 1 of a glossary of terms used in Railsback's lectures in GEOL 1122.
Part 2 of a glossary of terms used in Railsback's lectures in GEOL 1122.
There's no longer a lecture on evolution of plants, but for persons trying to find one of the readings, here's the link to An Ode to Plants.
A table of possible course grades given certain Exam 1 grades.
GEOL 1122 exams from Spring 2009:
Exam I
Exam II
Exam III (the final exam)
The essay questions for, and other information on, this year's final exam.
Other Links
Geological
A detailed geologic time scale.
A set of paleogeographic maps.
An online plate tectonic paleogeographic reconstruction service.
Biological/Evolutionary
The University of Arizona's Tree of Life of modern and ancient organisms.
The University of Georgia Department of Botany's Greenhouse Tour (see the plants we will or have talked about).
The University of California-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology's Exhibits on modern and ancient life.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum's of Paleontology's Early plant page and another page on Early land plants.
A spectacularly thorough, if spectacularly dry, online text on the evolution and phylogeny of vertebrates.
Other
A host of Web resources on Historical Geology from Pam Gore's web site at Georgia Perimeter College.
An overview of The Geology of Georgia.
A list of links to lists of Geologic Resources on the World-Wide Web.
The U.S. Naval Observatory's Time Service web page by which the professor sets his watch to assure that he begins class and ends class on time.
To illustrate the arbitrary nature of how humans denote time, an online list of dates for today generated by the world's various calendars (a fun page) and another.
Creationism
This GEOL 1122 section approaches the topic of creationism by reading a series of creation stories from cultures around the world. If you're interested in more direct arguments about American creationism, you might want to visit the following webpages with scientific views of creationism:
- - - Answers to FAQs about creationism and evolution at "Talk Origins"
- - - Mark I. Vuletic's list of creationist arguments, with responses
- - - Jim Merritt's somewhat flippant responses to creationist arguments
- - - George Bakken's evaluation of creationist arguments (scroll down past Darwin etc.)
Another page of interest might be one on the Scopes Trial.
Enthusiasts of the Hebrew Old Testament's stories of the earth's origin might be interested to read pages on
the origins of those stories.
Email to Railsback (rlsbk@gly.uga.edu)
Railsback's main web page
UGA Geology Department web page