Instructor's CD/Web Guide

Chapter 2, Rock-Forming Minerals and Rocks

CD Guide

Earth Matters Exercises

This tool will help students understand how the magma type and cooling rate determine the type of igneous rock formed when a magma cools. The minerals associated with mafic, intermediate, and felsic magmas are illustrated, as well as the rocks produced from each mineral type by slow, intermediate, and fast cooling. Each cooling rate is illustrated by an animation. In addition, for each combination of magma type and cooling rate, two additional tools are included. Clicking the "See It" button displays an animation of magma crystallizing into the corresponding type of igneous rock. Clicking "Plate Tectonic Setting" shows an illustration of the plate tectonic setting where that type of magma and cooling rate are generally found.

Homework Assignment
Encourage students to explore the Igneous Rocks tool thoroughly. Ask them to take notes about any questions they had or anything that they didn’t understand. They can then bring their questions and comments to class, and these can form the basis for a classroom discussion of igneous rocks.

Have students study the morph animations depicting how the texture of igneous rock changes with the rate at which it cools and comment on the differences in texture among the three types of magma and their cooling rates.

Classroom Discussion
You might want to use this tool to kick off a discussion of how igneous rock formation relates to plate tectonics. This will provide an excellent foundation for Chapter 8, Plate Tectonics, and Chapter 9, Continental Tectonics and Mountain Chains. Possible discussion questions:

  1. What type(s) of igneous activity take place at each of the main types of plate boundary?
  2. What magma compositions are found at these different boundary types?
  3. Where does slow cooling take place? Rapid cooling?
  4. What kinds of igneous rocks make up the ocean crust? The continental crust? Why?

The Sedimentary Rocks tool includes illustrations of the two major types of sedimentary rocks: chemical and clastic. A brief text description and an illustration are presented for each major chemical sedimentary rock type. For the clastic sedimentary rocks, text and illustrations are included for rocks produced by four different transport mechanisms: wave action, glaciers, wind, and rivers.

Homework Assignment
Ask students to use the tool and then write a short paper on the types, sizes, and shapes of sediments that are transported by ocean waves, glaciers, the wind, and rivers.

In this exercise, students can apply their knowledge of the materials and processes that produce various types of rock. For clastic sedimentary rocks, the student is presented with a sediment and the sedimentary rock it produces. An animation shows how the sediment is transformed into the rock. The student chooses the grain size, degree of sorting, and shape of the sediment making up the rock and gets immediate feedback on whether the answer is correct. Clicking the "Mineralogy" button displays the mineralogy of the rock. For igneous rocks, an animation shows how the magma cools to produce each rock in the exercise. The student chooses the cooling rate and mineralogy of the magma. For metamorphic rocks, an animation shows how the original rock is changed by heat and pressure to a metamorphic rock. The student chooses whether the temperature and pressure involved are high, medium, or low and whether the rock is foliated or nonfoliated (granular). Clicking the "Mineralogy" button displays the mineralogy of the rock.

Homework Assignment
This tool is an excellent way for students to test their overall knowledge of rocks and rock-forming minerals. The immediate feedback for both correct and incorrect answers also makes the exercise an effective learning tool. Ask students to use this exercise to study in preparation for a test or quiz covering the three major rock types. You might want to use the exercise as a source of questions for a test or quiz.

After students explore the tool, have them create a chart of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks and their associated properties. Have them chart grain size, sorting, and shape for sedimentary rocks; cooling rate and mineralogy for igneous rocks; and temperature, pressure, and foliage for metamorphic rocks. Each chart should list rocks in an order selected by the student.

Q&A

Encourage students to take this multiple-choice self-quiz, which is designed to cover the key concepts of this chapter. Take time out in class to ask if there are any topics covered in the quiz that were difficult to understand.

Homework Assignment
Have students write their own questions, which they can then present to the class. You can make this into a contest to see who can write the best question or the question that stumped the most students.

Web Guide

The Chapter 2 Student Online Study Guide contains several tools to help students study this chapter effectively. These include Chapter Objectives, Interactive Exercises, Key Terms, Q&A, CD/Web Review Questions, Focus on Earth Systems, and Web Links. In general, you can encourage students to investigate and use these tools to enhance their studying. Each tool is described briefly below, with some specific suggestions for how you might use it in the course.

Chapter Objectives

The Chapter Objectives list the major concepts that students should master for this chapter. Looking over the objectives is a good way for them to test their understanding of the chapter material and discover areas where they might need to focus their studying. The objectives can be used as a basis for classroom discussion: ask students to create their own lists of "chapter objectives" and bring them to class. How do their lists compare with the list in the Online Study Guide? Are they too detailed, or not detailed enough? This is a good way to find out if students are grasping the major concepts of the chapter or getting bogged down in details.

Interactive Exercises

There are many key terms in this chapter, and the Key Terms exercise lists only the terms that are boldfaced in the text. There are additional terms introduced in the first part of the chapter, however, that are not listed. The students are probably familiar with some of them from a course in chemistry or another physical science, but they may find a review to be helpful. In this exercise, students are asked to match key terms related to chemical bonds and reactions with their definitions. The exercise would make an excellent "pop quiz" to test students’ understanding of the fundamental chemical concepts underlying the study of minerals and rocks.

This exercise is a quick review of the configurations of igneous rock bodies on a continent.

Students are asked to fill in the missing blanks on a chart showing sedimentary rock classifications. This is a good way for them to test their understanding of the various kinds of sediments and sedimentary rocks and how they’re related.

Key Terms

The field of geology has a large number of specialized terms, and mastering these terms seems to be a particular challenge for many students. In this exercise, students are asked to match key terms introduced in this chapter with their definitions. You might want to use this exercise or parts of it for quizzes or exams.

Q&A

This feature is similar to the self-quiz on the CD; it’s presented on the web site to offer a choice of formats.

CD/Web Review Questions

The CD/Web Review Questions focus specifically on the CD and Web materials for Chapter 2. Each question has a Hint button that guides students to the source of the answer (CD section or web site) to help them answer the question if necessary. You might want to assign some or all of the questions for a quiz, exam, or homework. Answers are provided in a password-protected file. To obtain the login and password, please contact websites@whfreeman.com.

Focus on Earth Systems

An important goal of the textbook is to help students gain an appreciation for the "Earth Systems" approach to geology. This approach reflects a shift toward an integrative study of the entire Earth system and its subsystems: lithosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. Focus on Earth Systems points up the interrelationships among Earth’s systems in the materials covered in this chapter. This feature is similar to the one provided in the Test Bank with Instructor’s Resource Manual for Earth System History, but it is more detailed and is geared toward students.

Classroom Discussion
Discuss how sediments and sedimentary rocks are related to the water cycle. Possible discussion questions:

  1. Which reservoirs are involved in the production of sediments and sedimentary rocks? (Answer: All of them)
  2. What kinds of sediments and sedimentary rocks are produced in the oceans or by ocean wave action? By glaciers? By the atmosphere (wind)?
  3. Pick one sedimentary rock and trace its movement through the water cycle.

Homework Assignment
Have the students select a metamorphic rock and trace it through the rock cycle. Ask them to write their analysis and present it to the class. These essays can serve as a basis for classroom discussion.

Web Links

Web Links lead students to World Wide Web sites that contain supplemental information about topics studied in Chapter 2. One way to use this feature is to assign individual students or groups of students to investigate a site and report back to the class about what they discovered. Alternatively, students could write short essays based on information learned from the sites. Below, we provide specific suggestions for some of the Chapter 2 Web Links.

Questions related to the Web Links are provided in the CD/Web Review Questions. You may want to assign some or all of these questions as a quiz. Answers are provided in a password-protected file. To obtain the login and password, please contact websites@whfreeman.com.

This site is the first and best known periodic table on the web. Although the periodic table is not presented in the textbook, a basic familiarity with it can be helpful in understanding which elements tend to react chemically to form compounds, and why.

Homework Assignment
Ask students to visit this site, look over the table, take notes on their observations, print the table, and bring it to class.

Classroom Discussion
What do the elements in the first and second columns have in common? Which elements do they tend to react with, and why? What do the elements in columns 16 and 17 have in common? What is special about the elements in the last column? Which elements are of major abundance in Earth’s crust?

Homework Assignment
Ask students to pick a rock-forming mineral and find out all they can about it: its chemical composition, physical properties (hardness, density, cleavage, etc.), mineral family, abundance, and so forth. Have them report their findings to the class.

Minerals and Rocks (Earth Materials, Minerals, Silicates, Nonsilicates, Mineral Properties, Major Rock Groups, The Rock Cycle).

Igneous Rocks (Igneous Rock Occurrence, Igneous Rock Classification, Mineralogical Classification).

Sedimentary Rocks (Types of Sediments; Particle Size; Particle Shape; Clastic Sedimentary Rocks; Chemical Sedimentary Rocks; Organic Sedimentary Rocks; Minerals in Sediments; Shale Compaction; Sedimentary Structures; Porosity, Cement, and Plugging).

Metamorphic Rocks (Metamorphic Processes, Metamorphic Rock Classification, Metamorphic Rock Names, Metamorphic Grade, Metamorphic Facies).

Homework Assignment
Ask students to pick a topic (or assign topics, if desired) from the University of Saskatchewan site and make a short report to the class on the information they found.
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