News

As you are aware, the Ministry of Education has suggested that, commencing in 2002, a new Science course (Earth and Space Science) be offered as a pre-university, Grade 12 contribution. You are also probably aware that a portion of the "new" course was previously offered in as a "physical section" in Geography and Social Sciences. The Ministry - in its wisdom - decided two years ago that this should be discontinued because there were only about 500 students taking this course.

Joe Umanetz, enrichment teacher for the Bruce-Grey Catholic School Board and Peter Russell presented a one hour workshop titled "Geology for Beginners." to over 30 participants at this year's Science Teacher's Association of Ontario meeting at the Regal Constellation Hotel in early November. The focus was on local geology. Joe pointed out 10 basic concepts to be understood they are The Rock Cycle, Living on a Layercake, The Earth Moves, Up and Down Upheaval and Subduction, Sideways Tectonics, Sedimentation Coral Reefs, Glaciation, Weathering of Rocks and Minerals and Bedrock vs Gravel.

After studying Earth Sciences for three years at the University of Waterloo, I am finding that creating and understanding maps is a very important skill. Detailed maps can be used to show many features of interest to an Earth scientist, including the shape of the landscape; topography, geology, hydrology, locations and nature of terrestrial environments. Maps display massive amounts of information at once. The challenge is that it is impossible to display all the information about the landscape on a single map sheet because it would become too difficult to read.

Silver is the whitest of all metals. This property, and its high reflectivity, was responsible for its Latin name argentum (white and shining), from which the chemical symbol for silver, Ag, is derived. Because it does not readily oxidize, silver can be found in the native state - in metallic form rather than as a compound - and can therefore be assumed to be one of the first metals discovered. It has been found in tombs dating from 4000 BC.

To commemorate the life of Professor Harry Verney Warren, pioneer of biogeochemistry, rocks have been donated to Waterloo's Peter Russell Rock Garden from British Columbia, his home province.

It took nearly 100 years for a Paleozoic boulder-which fell from the Rocky Mountains as part of the historic 1903 Frank Slide-to reach eastern Canada and the end of its 2500 kilometer cross-country odyssey. In a nutshell, that's the story, and that's how the University of Waterloo campus came to be the end-of-the-road for what may be the world's most traveled, rock-from-a-rockslide rock. The Frank Slide boulder currently rests in the Peter Russell Rock Garden.

By Titia Praamsma

When I was attending the University of Waterloo in the late seventies, those words above never left my lips. Being a petroleum geologist was far from my mind. I was steeped in the romantic notion of doing hard rock field geology. I didn't have any idea what that meant until I started doing some co-op work terms. However, forces were at work that eventually steered me in the direction of petroleum geology and I really haven't regretted it.

William A.S. Sarjeant, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan

Early in 2000 I happened to be driving through the Inman Valley, south of Adelaide in South Australia when the sign "Glacier Rock Restaurant" caught my eye. I must confess that I am not intimately familiar with Australia's Quaternary history, but even from my meagre knowledge of Antipodean geography I seemed to be a little too far south of the Flinders Ranges and way too far west of the Snowy Mountains to imagine that this was some glacial relic.