Project Ideas

Project Ideas#

Some ideas for independent learning exercises to run in parallel with lectures.

The purpose of projects is to provide the opportunity for our students to learn more deeply about one or two topics from the course and to give you, the student, the freedom to present your work in the form you choose along with a short, written justification and discussion of how you spent your time and what you have learned.

Checklist

  • Read this document and discuss it with us

  • Academic sponsor (for self-designed projects)

  • Project plan

    • Which learning outcomes do you touch upon ?

    • What is the form of the project presentation (poster, talk, video, tapestry) ?

    • What background are you building upon ?

    • Timeline

  • Marking rubric

  • Sign-off on plan / rubric

  • Review of relevant work / background work

  • Interim report to class

  • Formal hand in before presentation

Marking Rubric and Project Plan#

All of the ideas we have outlined allow students to choose their project topics and the form of the presentation of their work. A project needs to have a clear plan so that the amount of work is appropriate to the assessment and reasonable. Advance planning also makes sure that students can focus on relevant material and the outcomes of their project.

Some of the suggested projects have an outline of the plan but it is important for instructors to make the submission of a project plan assessable and it should be delivered early for meaningful feedback.

The marking rubrics really should be developed by students with help from an instructor. The rubric acts like a filter that weights the parts of the project that are assessable against the parts that may be interesting and fun but are not connected to the outcomes of the course. We want this distinction to be clear at the start of the project and helping the students to write the rubric for their project really helps. This is obviously very important if the final form of the project is something hard to assess quantitatively (a dance, a piece of music, a teaching demonstration, for example).

The rubric needs to state very clearly what the assessable parts of the project will be and how they are to be assessed. For the purposes of assessing the rubric itself, each part should be connected explicitly to one of the course learning outcomes.

Reading based projects#

Pairings: A classic paper paired with a more recent update that will allow you to 1) appreciate the original work in the light of the observations available to the authors, 2) understand the way the basic concepts of structure and tectonics evolve in meaning even when the nomenclature remains the same, and 3) realise that the emergence of new ideas does not (always) invalidate the old but may well adjust the way in which we frame and reuse those ideas. The reading should be wider than the two papers in question but those provide the end points to help steer the discussion.

Instructions for reading projects

The task is to choose one of these papers and then to look for a significant paper to pair with it from the past (say) decade that either updates the original paper, provides an observational validation, or perhaps a major re-evaluation of the idea.

Writing up these two papers into a report should include a discussion of the significance of the original paper, and the nature of the updated information in the recent paper. Which key points from the course are important to understanding the importance of this work ?

Students should make a presentation of their report in a format of their choosing such as: a very short 3-5 minute oral discussion with a few slides, a poster in a “standard conference format” which you can summarise in a 3-5 minute talk, a video presentation of about 3-5 minutes long, or any other assessable format agreed with the instructors.

Global tectonics#

  • Wilson, J. T. (1963). CONTINENTAL DRIFT. Scientific American, 208(4), 86–103. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0463-86. This paper came very early in the evolution of the plate tectonic paradigm but outlines a version of the theory that has changed very little despite the vastly increased observational data that subsequently became available

  • Heezen, B. C., & Tharp, M. (1965). Tectonic fabric of the Atlantic and Indian oceans and continental drift. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 258, 90–106. https://doi-org.virtual.anu.edu.au/10.1098/rsta.1965.0024. Marie Tharp was a driving force behind the mapping of the sea-floor and the rendering of the bathymetry into a now-ubiquitous relief map

  • Wilson, J. T. (1965). A New Class of Faults and their Bearing on Continental Drift. Nature, 207(4995), 343–347. https://doi.org/10/b4vzck. Transform faults in the ocean-floor were first explained as such by Tuzo Wilson an observation of incredible significance for the plate tectonic framework

  • Vine, F. (1968). Magnetic anomalies associated with mid-ocean ridges. In The history of the earth’s crust (pp. 73–89). Princeton University Press Princeton, NJ. The observation of the magnetic reversals stamped into the oceanic crust by spreading set the scene for plate kinematic reconstruction. This paper is a mature synthesis of earlier contributions but still one of the foundation works of plate tectonics

  • McKENZIE, D. P., & Morgan, W. J. (1969). Evolution of Triple Junctions. Nature, 224, 125–133. In plate kinematics, the behaviour of triple junctions is predictable and their evolution through time can be used for reconstruction. This paper is a complete analysis of what happens if we assume the kinematic rules of plate boundary evolution are precisely satisfied in the ocean

  • Dewey, J. F. (1972). PLATE TECTONICS. Scientific American, 226(5), 56–72. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0572-56. Dewey makes the connection between oceanic plate motion and continental tectonics in a way that does not over-complicate the continental side of the picture

  • Tapponnier, P., Peltzer, G., Dain, A. Y. L., Armijo, R., & Cobbold, P. (1982). Propagating extrusion tectonics in Asia: New insights from simple experiments with plasticine. Geology, 10, 611–616. https://doi.org/10/bmzcmt. A paper that proposes the concept of “escape tectonics” which recognises that continental deformation is not just driven by boundary forces but also by the balance between crustal thickening and gravitational potential energy.

Brittle Deformation#

  • Anderson, E. M. (1905). The dynamics of faulting. Oliver and Boyd. A paper details the fundamental idea and theory behind the Anderson’s theory of faulting.

  • Paterson, M. S. (1958). Experimental deformation and faulting in Wombeyan marble. GSA Bulletin, 69(4): 465-476. https://doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1958)69[465:EDAFIW]2.0.CO;2. A paper documents a series of early rock mechanical experiments carried within RSES on exploring the brittle-ductile behavior of a coarse-grained marble.

  • Raleigh, C. B., & Paterson, M. S. (1965). Experimental deformation of serpentinite and its tectonic implications. Journal of Geophysical Research, 70(16), 3965-3985. https://doi.org/10.1029/jz070i016p03965. A paper by ANU earth scientists on exploring the different factors on the rheological behaviours of serpentinite.

  • Secor, D. T. (1965). Role of fluid pressure in jointing. American Journal of Science, 263(8), 633-646. https://doi.org/10.2475/ajs.263.8.633. A paper combines fluid pressure theory and rock failure criteria to examine the mechanics of natural tension fracturing.

  • Byerlee, J. D. (1968). Brittle‐ductile transition in rocks. Journal of Geophysical Research, 73(14), 4741-4750. https://doi.org/10.1029/jb073i014p04741. A paper studies the brittle-ductile transition through deformational characteristics of some common rock types in the crust and upper mantle.

  • Handin, J. (1969). On the Coulomb‐Mohr failure criterion. Journal of Geophysical Research, 74(22), 5343-5348. https://doi.org/10.1029/jb074i022p05343. A paper adds some history and details on the Coulomb-Mohr failure criterion.

  • Anderson, D. L. (1971). The San Andreas fault. Scientific American, 225(5), 52-71. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1171-52. An early paper summarizes various aspects of the San Andreas fault system, including its displacement measurements, the regional tectonic history, fault origin and its associated seismicity.

  • Kanamori, H., & Anderson, D. L. (1975). Theoretical basis of some empirical relations in seismology. Bulletin of the seismological society of America, 65(5), 1073-1095. An early paper explores the different scaling laws among several important earthquake parameters through an extensive set of earthquake data in the 1980s.

  • Dahlen, F. A. (1990). Critical taper model of fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 18(1), 55-99. “for understanding the large­ scale mechanics of fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges.”

  • Sylvester, A. G., 1988, Strike-slip faults: GSA Bulletin, v. 100, no. 11, p. 1666-1703. A must-read paper for anyone, and more so for those who want to understand the mechanisms of strike-slip faulting

  • Lister, G.S., Davis, G. (1989) The origin of metamorphic core complexes and detachment faults formed during Tertiary continental extension in the northern Colorado River region, U.S.A. Journal of Structural Geology 11, pp. 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8141(89)90036-9 Seminal article for core complexes and detachment faults, cited well over a thousand times.

  • Dewey, J.F., 1988. Extensional collapse of orogens. Tectonics 7, 1123–1139. https://doi.org/10.1029/TC007i006p01123

  • Davis, D., Suppe, J., Dahlen, F.A., 1983. Mechanics of fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges. J. Geophys. Res., 88, 1153-1172. https://doi.org/10.1029/JB088iB02p01153

Hands-on projects#

Some of the demonstration examples that we suggest for practical class exercises can be developed into more extensive projects over the course of a few weeks. You will typically need to understand the principles behind the demonstration in order to construct a version of your own to work with at home.

Examples include:

  • A home made version of the sandbox practical with a focus on the connection between the design of the experiments and the geological structures that they approximate. Are there any novel aspects to an experiment that you could do over a longer period of time than a single afternoon in the lab ?

  • Demonstration of diapirism using simple kitchen materials. This is akin to the sandbox project only much more messy. We never do these kinds of experiments in half-day practicals as they take a lot of setting up and clearing away. However, you can imagine making some analogues to lower-crustal flow or salt diapirs using oils, syrup and sand.

  • Design your own experiment for a strength test using common materials at home (e.g., clay) and create / record the stress vs. strain graphs. Try different materials that can result in brittle and ductile materials, and conduct experiments using ductile materials with different strain rate. Detail how you apply known loads to materials and how you standardise the samples that you are testing to ensure the experiments are repeatable.

  • Use cheese (or whatever works !) as an analog to understand some fracture fundamentals. You can make small cuts (fracture nuclei) in processed cheese food and then apply stresses perpendicular or parallel to the cuts to see how fractures grow. How is this experiment different and/or similar to rock deformation? How will various kinds of applied stresses act on pre-existing cracks

  • Darcy flow modelling using a coffee machine. Fluid flow and fluid pressure in the pore-space of granular materials influences the strength because it changes the effective pressure that appears in the strength envelope. The Darcy flow model is often used as a approximation for the fluid flow in response to pressure gradients. It relates flow rates to pressure gradients through a permeability - this is something that is demonstrable in something as simple as a home espresso machine (a pump establishes a pressure gradient across a granular material).

Instructions for hands-on projects

We have made some suggestions above but they are only suggestions. If you plan to undertake one of the hands-on projects, use these ideas as an inspiration and then come to talk to us. You can think of these as suggestions for designing your own project. One of us will be your academic sponsor for the project but you will need to flesh out your own version of the project and how you wish to make connections to the core topics of the course.

You will need to work with us on the plan and marking rubric once you have decided which project to undertake.

Mapping projects#

Field-based mapping projects need to avoid overlap with field sections of this course but are otherwise encouraged ! Any mapping project will need to complete the same planning and risk-management process as any field work and this time cannot be counted as part of the assessable component.

It is also possible to map large-scale features virtually using topographic maps, digital elevation models and online geological map data and this has a much lower administrative overhead.

  • TBA

Instructions for designing a mapping project

TBA

Self-designed project#

As long as there is a connection to a key concept in the course and the workload is equivalent to one of the suggestions above, students can be encouraged to design a project that interests them including joint projects or projects that draw on material from other courses. If the project uses background information or is a team project, then the plan will need to outline the individual contribution and the rubric should be written to assess only the individual part.

Instructions for designing a project from scratch

If you would like to suggest a project, you first need to find an academic sponsor to help with the planning and provide perspective on the marking scheme. The topic should be relevant to the course and the most effective way to ensure that is to review the learning outcomes and identify how the project topic touches on at least one of these.

Read the comments above about assessment. The project mark is based on the work that is relevant to the course and that is also your own contribution rather than the background material or work shared with a group. We may not be familiar with the background material you have from your academic sponsor so it will be important to document this for us.

Decide what you want to do and make sure you get us to give feedback and, ultimately, sign off on the project.

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