GEOL 5730 - Forensic Geoscience

• Graduate students are expected to perform at a higher level than their undergraduate counterparts. They are expected to have a more sophisticated grasp of current debates regarding the course topics.
• Graduate students are expected to prepare and lead discussions of case studies for 10% of their grade. Their term papers are worth 30% of their grade as opposed to 20% for the undergraduate students.
• Be able to describe the common types of economic ores, the distribution of operating and abandoned mining operations and characteristics of mining products and waste materials (tailings).
• Be able to describe the major igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks in terms of their mineralogic composition, formation processes and occurences in a plate tectonic context.
• Be able to select appropriate geophysical tools for locating specific buried targets (e.g., trenches, plastic or metal containers, voids, etc.).
• Describe common commercial materials in terms of their mineralogic content.
• Describe the analytical techniques used to identify hydrocarbon compounds.
• Know the basic groups of minerals and their elemental and crystallographic properties.
• Know the basic tools for mineral identification including macroscopic properties, petrographic microscopy, cathodoluminescence, electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and infrared and Raman spectroscopy.
• Know the geochemical characteristics of surface and ground waters.
• Know the relationship between naturally occurring hydrocarbons and refined hydrocarbon products as well as the common uses of these products.
• Understand generally how pollen and fossils help restrict areas of investigation.
• Understand the major classifications of soils and other unconsolidated materials and their characteristic textures, mineralogic and organic material content and their typical occurrences.
• Understand the principles underlying geophysical techniques including magnetometer surveying, resistivity imaging, ground-penetrating radar and electromagnetic conductivity sensing.
• Understand the proper technique for sampling soils and waters for laboratory analysis.