Global View
The allure of minerals like gold, diamonds, and other precious metals
drives human interest in rocks and minerals. This metamorphic rock from
Lander County, NV contains a band of gold ore. Nevada leads gold production
in the U.S. (UNR/William Keck Museum).You can spend your life studying rocks and minerals. There are geologists here at IUPUI that do! Some study them directly like Dr. Andrew Barth, while some study the biogeochemical processes that move minerals from one Earth compartment to the next like Dr. Gabriel Filippelli. Understanding minerals and rocks is useful for finding mineral resources, which we all need. (Later I’ll tell you if it’s possible to find gold in our Indiana streams!)
In this module, we have only grazed the surface of rocks and minerals, learning only those concepts that will help us to understand other ideas later in the semester.
Our understanding of bonding, minerals, rock strength, and rock formation will help us to understand everything from why we have such rich soil here in Indiana to why we mine limestone and coal in southern Indiana. We’ll see how what we learned here will relate to Earthquakes, helping us to understand why the ones in California are so much stronger than the ones here in Indiana – and, yes, we do have them here in Indiana. We’ll also use what we’ve learned here to understand volcanoes, and why most people would rather live in Hawaii versus Oregon and Washington in terms of volcanic hazards. Count on it: by the time we get through with this course, you will be able to reason from chemical bond to Earth hazard why you should move to Hawaii.
All-in-all, we are going to continue to build on the ideas we’ve explored in this module. So make sure that you can put it all together!
Please complete this section by taking the assessment.
