Last night we covered bathymetric maps in my Historical Geology lab. This lab usually involves the students examining bathymetric maps of various active and passive margins and sketching them in cross section. The point of this lab is to see what types of physiographic features are associated with different margin types, and to recognize the boundaries between continental shelf, slope, rise, and the abyssal plain. There is a new tool at their disposal.
Coincidentally, Google Earth 5 was made available yesterday morning. After some consultation with the IT department I was able to install it onto a classroom computer that is hooked up to an overhead projector. Google Earth was useful before, but the ability to examine seafloor features is going to be a BIG help to me. I centered in on the edge of the continental shelf off the coast of North Carolina and submerged myself beneath the google sea. After adjusting the angle as if I were standing on the shelf margin and looking northward, I, and my class, could clearly see the subtle angular breaks that typically define plate boundaries. We then stood at the bottom of the trench off the coast of Nicaragua.
This will be very useful to me.
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Some classroom ideas work, some don't. Here you can find examples of both.
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