Reading

Reading Federica Raia's "Students' Understanding of Complex Dynamic Systems" Jour. Geoscience Edu. 53. 3. 2005.

The author gives three short response question to sixteen of her undergrad geoscience students, whom have varying majors and levels of education, in an attempt to determine if they are thinking linearly or complexly. All but two fail to think complexly. Dr. Raia used her own scoring criteria, culled from multiple resources, to categorize parts of student responses 12 ways, 6 ways in the Linear thinking type, and 6 corresponding ways in the Complex/Systems approach type. Even though the three questions the students responded to were given as both pre & post test, they still generally failed to attribute complex/Systems type of analysis in their answers.

The first question showed a hypothetical marine strat sequence and asked them to describe the events that caused it. Rather than reference plate tectonics and the movement of the part of the plate in question into different depositional environments, the students though there was at one time ridge (or just a basalt supplying volcano for some students), and then later a volcanic island (which provided ash and sands). Raia felt that the responses, aside from being wrong, showed that the students could only think up 'accidental' causes, not driving forces that aren't specifically written out in the column itself (iow exegent forces).

In the second question they were asked to describe glaciations in New York and their causes; they didn't talk about Milankovitch scale changes or ocean circulation changes. A bunch of them thought she meant 'glaciers', and they just tried to diagram how glaciers move. Others felt that a comet or meteor struck the Earth and tilted its axis, another that 'something' moved the Earth further away from the Sun (in fact they cited 'god' as having done that!!). At least they recognized that changes in the Earth's tilt and orbit can drive climate change. But since the concern here is how they are thinking, that doesn't really offer any reassurances. Those responses still show that they are looking at accidental causes or intelligently directed causes, so again no complex thinking/analysis.

The last question was a simple one, explain why geese fly in a V formation. Most students thought that either a lead goose directed the others or that the goose genes directed them. Some of the students even specifically said that it was the King Goose that directed them, and one student was quick to point out that a Leader, though not necessarily a male, directed them. Funny that she was able to point that out, but still not think about real causes. Two students did realize that it had something to do with air dynamics and ease of flying (c.f. 'drafting'). Raia notes that these same two students were answered the original question by referencing plate motion, away from spreading centers and torwards a subduction zone, AND that these two students were amoung the least educated in the group (they had met the prerequisites, but had no advanced classes). In terms of complex thinking, the students generally didn't consider that properties the whole emerge from actions of the parts, they felt that there had to be a leader, whether a goosey Malik Taus or "the genes", and that they also importantly glossed over many connecting levels by jumping from genes, which code for proteins, to position within the flock.

Dr. Raia concludes by making some comments on the import of complex thinking in relation to evolution education and the environment. With particular respect to evolution, since there is no 'leader', no King Goose directing things, Dr. Raia speculates that non-complex thinking, the linear thinking common to even upper classmen, pre-determines that they will have a particularly difficult time and end up with poor overall understanding.

That last point is particularly interesting, especially because Complex Thinking seems like it can very easily fit into a evolutionary curriculum. Raia defines complex thinking as havin a few characteristics, such as: the recognition of mutual interactions between components, which to me sounds like genes operating on and being influenced by the genome; distinguishing between micro and macro levels, just like micro evolution within a species and speciation; and emergent properties, which could work in as something like Gould's ideas of higher hierarchical levels in the structure of evolutionary theory. Emergent properties ala complex systems also makes me think of the shape of a cladogram. We have the individual species as the parts, operating under their own 'atomic laws', their particular particle properties, but then there is the branching pattern of the whole cladogram emerging out of it. I think that the contingence factor here, the effect of fairly random or at least non-'Darwinian' events on the pattern of extinction and radiation, actually strengthens teaching this as a 'complex system'.

NAGT part deux

"Caffeine and Carbs" breakfast at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in their new science building, the Gary Comer building. Apparently Mr. Comer is a businessman who sailed through the northwest passage on a bet, that he wouldn't be able to do it. After completing it, he was apparently so impressed by the lack of ice blocking the passage, that he became very interested in climate. One of the results of that is then this new research facility. Most of the researchers haven't moved in yet, at least it looked like that to me, but there were several that were doing work while the conference was going on. I beleive that Dr. deMenocal's lab is going to be in this building also. Out of the blue, Dr. Green from the department showed up and we talked for a while. Then, possibly out of the same blue, Dr. Coke from Adelphi showed up. We talked for a while too. That was especially fortunate for me, because I didn't have the car for that trip and he offered me a ride on the Iron Mine trail trip, which I had been planning on going on. Dr. Green was attending a different trip. NAGT had prepared box lunches for the trip, but you had to pay for them, which is unusual, but probably a result of having to plan the whole thing on two month's notice.

After breakfast, Dr. Wally Broecker from LDEO gave a talk. Infact, it was the same talk he had given at the OSM 2008 meeting in Orlando, "Warning from the world's tiny Oceans (closed lake basins)." He started by considering Held's (Issac Held, Princeton) prediction that in a warming world, the tropics get wetter and the drylands get drier. Dr. Broecker reasoned that if thats what happens in a warming world, then should, in a cooling world, the tropics get drier and the drylands get wetter? He tested this by looking at the sizes of various pluvial (closed basin) lakes through the ages. He decided that the following equation applies:

A(basin)* hRfr = A(lake)hE (hR rainfall rate, fr runoff fraction, hE lake evaporation)

and that from this,

A(lake)/A(basin) = fr (hR/hE)

He refered to a 'mystery interval' between just before 18kya and 14kya where climate acts strangely. In this interval, the Southern ocean is warming, while ice coverage in the Northern hemisphere grows. He also stated that there was an increase in CO2, probably caused by the retreat of seaice in the Southern Hemisphere.

The ITCZ shifts southwards, because it follows heat across the globe (this is what it normally does in austral summers). This incidentally results in a weakening of monsoons. The biggest southwards push of the ITCZ is during the Mystery Interval.

Dry lakes are largest during the mystery interval, and large at the LGM. Dr. Broecker concluded that the ice volumes that existed during the ice ages do NOT obviate Held's prediction, and that drylands will infact get much dryer as the world warms.

He also, interestingly, stated that he wasn't too concerned anymore with shutdown of global thermohaline circulation, especially not by influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic. The Younger Dryas cooling that may have resulted from just such an effect would've required a great amount of water. Since there aren't giant reserves of ice today, Dr. Broecker observed, we're probably not going to have a massive influx of freshwater, even with melting at the poles, and shutting down THC. He also felt that the recent papers that claimed to have observed a shutdown of the Gulf Stream were just too short in duration to be able to call 'abnormal'. He figured you'd need a 30 year record or something like that on that level of detail to be able to rule of 'normal' cycles.


There was a break after the talk, and then we met for the saturday field trips. I went on a trip to the Iron Mine trail at the Sterling Forest Visitors center in NY. Dr. Gates of Rutgers lead the trip and passed out a trip guide booklet. The trail included a pre-revolution Iron Furnance which had been shut down in the 1760s, but then, at the command of none less than Washington himself was rebuilt and reopened to aid in the war. Afterwards, it was shutdown again. It reopened again much later, and ceased operations in the 1920s. Originally ore rock, charcoal, and limestone was carted to the Furnace, dumped into it, and then it was tapped at the bottom to release molten iron. In the closer to modern period, magnetite ore was actualy mined on location. Apparently the people that built the Furnace didn't know that there was in fact a large reserve of ore so close by. The remains of the more modern that shutdown in the 1920s are still there. Cables for the cable cars are strewn all around the cable house. We walked off the path and behind those remains and a little ways and came upon a small strip mine, with an entrance to another underground mine nearby in a depression of rocks, the organization had sealed a gate over the entrance to prevent anyone from entering, the interior of the mine if of course flooded anyway.
The magnetite in this location, Dr. Gates explained and pointed out, did not, as is usual, form by deposition within fractures of the surrounding rock. Rather, the source water leached into the surrounding carbonate rocks, and slowly replaced them such that now the magnetite has the relict structures of the carbonate.
The visitors center had very nice dioramas of the furnance and mine and the park in general. We also watched a short video wherein Dr. Gates, and a cartoon cave man (Dr. Gates was equally bewildered as the rest of us), described the geological history of the park. We started in the visitors center and ended there. One of the park rangers had relatively recently been able to acquire and trace back to the more modern mine an ore cart (apparently the person who had previously found it had been using it as a bbq), and also a part of the pre-revolutionary Furnace, some sort of iron flange that they thought was slotted into a beam as part of the Furnance, which was powered by a waterwheel.

NAGT Trip

Friday
Apparently the meeting was supposed to be in the Hamptons, but 2 months ago that all fell through. Within that time, the group managed to set up a meeting at LDEO and some field trips. Unfortunately, the hotel is terrible. I called up to make reservations and could hear that there was construction going on. Some hallways in the hotel are metal rafters for the ceiling and carpeted floors. Its been raining so the whole place stinks of mold, and the floors in some hallways are sopping wet. The lady at the front desk when I showed up was sitting at a fold out table with a hardhat on. After checking in she lifted up a plastic tarp that was covering one of the doors and let me go through a torn apart hallway with equipment lying everywhere to get the side of the hotel my room was on. We're also going to have to pay admission for some of the trips.

Field Trip to Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, NJ to a former Zinc mine w/fluorescent minerals. Collected ~9lbs worth of material from their tailings pile. Calcite fluoresces red, willemite green, and I managed to get a small sample with a little bit of hydrozincite, which glows a pale blue. All of this apparently a result of just one element in the form of impurities in the mineral, Manganese. In different crystals, forming different bonds, the bonding electrons which are participating in the fluorescence fluoresce different colors. The museum also gives a tour of the mine where the walls of the mine, of course, are made up of these brilliantly fluorescing minerals. The museum also has a great mineral collection on display, apparently obtained by the Oreck vacuum family.


I spoke with Earl Verbeek, the field geologist at the Sterling Hill Mining Museum regarding their teacher education program, which seems like an interesting program. They have on site training and also videoconferencing, which is good because we have that ability too.

I gave a presentation before the group on our MSS-OST program. Most people seemed interested. At least we were able to get the word out about the program. Other presentations included evaluating teaching techniques with reference to certification level, using GIS in the class room (specificallty ArcGis and ArcExplorer) and the Einstein Program.

I spoke with a Ms. Kathy Prichinello from New Utrecht HS (1601-80 St Brooklyn NY 11214) during the group dinner. She was curious to see our Introduction to Earth Science Lab Manual, I told her I would find out if it is permited to sent it out. She said she is allways looking for new ways of running her labs.

Poster for NAGT

Completed and printed out a 24 inch wide poster for NAGT on the MSS-OST program. Created file in Adobe InDesgin, which does not export as a tiff. KCATT, where the poster was printed by Brian (Dr. Rosen was out)works in tiff format. They also allways seem to work in MS Publisher. I will have to remember to try to prepare the next poster in Publisher. I thought I entered the size into Adobe InDesign as 24 inches, but apparently it was smaller. Brian was able to easily resize to 24 wide.