Professor: Karin Block
The Smithsonianmag.com article on James Hutton 1726-1797 (Father of Modern Geology) certainly drew my interest in the subject: "The genealogy of these ideas ... goes from Hutton to Playfair to Lyell to Darwin."
Then Catastrophism vs. Uniformitarianism (Hutton's view) is introduced.
This is also interestingly referred by Answers in Genesis. There seems to be a well documented history of the views on Earth's age. For example, Gap Theory was introduced not by Vos (as I had previously thought from reading Vos' commentary), but by someone earlier, Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847).
The professor did refute young-earth creationists view (Earth is not 6000 years old).
I supposed the most important challenge is the glossary.
Definitions Training is for this class is now available on Memrise.
Glossary:
Go through all the slides and type them here.... (delete soon)
The interesting thing about determining epicenter of an earthquake is the S-P interval, which instead of S or P waves time-distance relationships, the S-P interval time-distance is used to determine the epicenter.
A cool extra credit project.
Plate Boundaries: Very interesting, a good site: http://www.learner.org/interactives/dynamicearth/plate.html
Other spheres known:
Rhizosphere
Endosphere
Movie to watch on greed and natural resources:
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
There will be blood (2007)
Charles Mann's book recommended: 1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Gold mining:
Use mercury to bind with gold => Amalgam. Which is then boiled to separate the gold.