Geology
This is a set of outline notes prepared for Advanced Level Geology. The background is that I am a Biologist who recently took early retirement from my job in Newcastle College. Out of general interest, I enrolled as a student to take an Advanced Level course in Geology. Following the advice I had been giving students for years, I have made notes for each section of the syllabus - fairly concise with a lot of bullet points. Having put in a lot of work it seems a shame to waste them - so here they are. The syllabus is OCR: Oxford and Cambridge Modular Sciences: Geology 9766 but it overlaps with those of other Examining Boards. For those outside the UK, this is similar to many first year university courses.
Please remenber that these notes are made by someone who had just started Geology. On the other hand, they got me a Grade A in GCE Advanced Level Geology (summer 1999 exam) so they must contain the right amount of information. There may be errors and if there are I will try to correct them. The original notes were written in Word7 and I just saved them as HTML - which means that some formatting and table layouts are lost. I hope you might find them useful. If you do, email me and tell me - we all like a little bit of encouragement!!!
The syllabus is modular and these notes are arranged in unit sections. Just hit the links.
The units are:
G1 - Global Tectonics and Geological Structures
Structure of the Earth and earthquakes (G1.1-G1.5)
G2 - Rock Forming Processes and Products
Rock cycle and igneous processes and rocks (G2.1-2.9)
Sedimentary processes and products (G2.10-2.16)
Metamorphic processes and products (G2.11-2.21)
G3 - Environmental Geology
Engineering geology (G3.15-3.17)
G4 - Fossils and Palaeoenvironments
Preservation, evolution, adaptive radiation and palaeoenvironments (G4.1-4.2,4.4-4.11)
Systematics and morphology (G4.3)
Checklist of features that might have to be labelled in an exam
G6 - Rock and Mineral Properties and Practical Identification
Most of the theory is covered in other units. The rest of the module is practical identification, so I can't help you there.
G7 - Petrology
Igneous processes 1 (G7.1-7.3)
Igneous processes 2 (G7.4-7.7)
Sedimentary processes (G7.8-7.12)
Metamorphic processes (G7.13-7.20)
Being a diligent student, I did some homework exercises and past questions. These are "extended prose" questions to be answered in 30 min. Follow the links. They may not be perfect but would get a good grade in an exam. The illustrations are not saved - you will have to use your imagination!
Assessed practicals (Course Work)
In this syllabus, practical work is assessed and accounts for 20% of the examination. Here are my reports, they all got 5 out of 5. They are much too long and elaborate for this level but old habits die hard and I tried to make them as complete as possible. You might find them useful as a guide to scientific writing. The approach is much more important then the content. Don't be tempted to copy them, you could be penalised by the examining board, use them as models. Follow the links.
Denis Scadeng
Updated 20 Aug. 1999