The Outward Look
GEOLOGY AT DARTMOUTH:"Knowledge of the world is to begained only in the world, not inthe closet." - LORD CHESTERFIELD
GRADUATE STUDENT, CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
THE three-term, three-course curriculum inaugurated at Dartmouth this fall necessitated a complete review of its program by each department of the College. Advance planning was carried on last year, while the old system was still in operation, and even with the new plan now in effect, a lot of adjustment and experimentation remains to be done.
The Department of Geology, in its somewhat elevated location on the third floor of Silsby Hall, has been faced with some peculiar problems in transferring to the three-term system. Geology is the study of the earth; its first laboratory and classroom is the out-of-doors. Its lessons may be read from textbooks and lecture notes, but they must eventually be applied to the study of the slippery outcrops along Route 5, or the cluttered gravel pits of West Lebanon. The first problem is one of preserving this contact with field experience during a transition in the academic arrangement of the curriculum.
Geology, like other sciences, is in a growing stage. While the knowledge of the past can be read in the textbooks of the present, it is the research of the present, carried out in a hundred different places in the world, that will form the basis for the texts of tomorrow. This second problem, facing any science department, is one of bringing to the student some awareness of the fields of present research, without which his education cannot be called complete. And, if this can be accomplished by some method more vivid and lasting than the mere listing of articles from The Journal ofGeology and The American Mineralogist, the better will be the student's appreciation of the continuity of geologic research.
To appreciate better the Department of Geology's plans for meeting this twofold challenge under the three-term system, we might spend some time studying their activities over the past year. Two additions to the regular lecture-and-laboratory activities are notable, because each tries to deal with one of the problems we have already mentioned. These are extensive field trips and guest lectures.
Field trips are the keystone of geological education. Even at the elementary level, students in Geology 1, may spend two or three afternoons outside, studying firsthand the problems which appear, somewhat simplified perhaps, in the text and lectures. More important than these one-outcrop-per-afternoon excursions, however, are the three- and four-day trips away from Hanover which every senior major experiences.
One field weekend, under Prof. Andrew H. McNair, involves a three-day trip into the Catskill Mountains for geologic mapping and study. Admittedly, it may be simpler and easier than one would expect actual field study to be, for the area is small, the rocks are recognizable, and the student already has some vague idea as to what he should find. Yet, beyond this advantage, he is on his own. He must climb the cliffs himself, beat his own way through the woods, and make his own philosophical adjustment to the erratic behavior of his Brunton compass. Most important, he must assemble a map from his own data and make his own decisions about the hypothetical value of the property. He may know from the grapevine that the mythical "Widow Schultz," who owns the property, has $35,000,000 worth of limestone reserves, but it is the attainment of the result, and not the result itself, that constitutes his education.
A second field trip, usually held in the spring, ranges farther afield to Southern Quebec, an area which produces about half the world's asbestos fiber. Fifteen or twenty seniors from the Ore Deposits course, shepherded by Profs. Richard E. Stoiber '32 and John B. Lyons, make the traditional trip, after a thorough session of "busy work" has fortified them with a vague feeling for the complex ins and outs of asbestos mining and milling.
The last trip had an added attraction, a visit to a small pyrite-copper mine near Weedon, P. Q., involving a trip below ground to examine the actual ore and mining techniques. It was here that education and an appreciation for tilings mentioned in passing in the textbooks was strongly impressed. It is one thing to read about ore skips and hoists, but quite another to crouch in the bottom of one and be lowered 1400 feet down a shaft into a rumbling darkness pierced only by the cone of light from one's headlamp. It may have been of interest to read about ore deposits in the quiet of a library, but it was different to see the ore imbedded in the unmoving rock and hear the chatter of the air drills as they cut into it. The abstract discussion of copper prices and smelter schedules became more real when one realized that he was meeting men who depended for their employment on fluctuations of a cent.
The asbestos area to the north of Weedon, the Thetford Mines-Black Lake region, was a different experience. The mines there were gigantic, huge open pits or large underground operations aimed at removing the asbestos fiber from the altered rock in which it had been placed, millions of years ago, by the operation of geological and chemical forces not fully understood. The towns were small and centered around the mines; piles of "tailings" or waste rock rose on the horizons.
The places visited were many, and yet enough time was spent at each so that the student felt he had learned something. There were two open-pit asbestos mines to see, with good specimens for the mineral collectors in the group (that is, everyone). There was an underground mine with hundreds of feet of passages, both horizontal and vertical. There was an asbestos mill, where the raw rock was reduced to packed fiber, ready for use in shingles and insulation. There was a deserted chromium mine, built during the scarcities of wartime, and never operated since.
And beyond the geology, there was the more unique experience of living (for a weekend, at least) in a foreign country, where a person might not make himself understood unless he spoke French. There was, throughout the whole trip, the feeling of being, for a brief moment, an unofficial representative of the United States, and perhaps the slight notion that each student was acting not only for himself but also for people in America.
To bring to the students the feeling that geologic research is a thing of the present, and to counteract, perhaps, the slight dryness of the textbook, the Department of Geology invites several guest speakers each year to give talks about their own particular fields.
Dr. Raymond Thorsteinsson's short but eventful visit to Hanover last March brought his vibrant personality and wide experience with the Arctic into several departments and courses in the College. As a geologist for the Canadian Geological Survey, Dr. Thorsteinsson has spent the last seven years doing research in the islands which lie on the edge of the Arctic Ocean to the north of the Canadian mainland, combining the techniques of field geology, paleontology (the study of fossil life), and arctic survival in his work.
His contributions to these fields during his short stay at Dartmouth were numerous and extensive. He visited with Vilhjalmur Stefansson and returned to him a message container that Dr. Stefansson had left on Meighen Island over forty years ago; no one had visited the island before Dr. Thorsteinsson arrived. Dr. Thorsteinsson also gave a series of lectures, a general one entitled "America's Far Arctic Islands," and several technical talks for the students in the Arctic Seminar and the Geology Department.
Geology majors who were present will probably remember most clearly Dr. Thorsteinsson's work with graptolites in the basement of Silsby. Graptolites, tiny animals which lived 400 million years ago, have been preserved in the rocks of the Arctic Islands. Where they can be found undamaged, they are priceless for dating and matching rock formations. Dr. Thorsteinsson's specimens had been enclosed, undamaged, in lumps of limestone, and all that was necessary for their detection and removal was dilute acid, a microscope, and a lot of patience. Shortly after he had demonstrated his techniques, the whole Geology 22 course (plus a few kibitzers) was trying, not too unsuccessfully, to catch and preserve the tiny slivers of carbon that had been living animals in some ancient, unpreserved sea.
A Dartmouth alumnus, William B. Heroy '37, provided a series of lectures in counterpoint to those of Dr. Thorsteinsson. Dr. Heroy, a vice-president of the Geotechnical Corporation of Dallas, Texas, delivered a group of talks to the geology majors on the use of geophysical methods in the detection of petroleum and mineral deposits.
In the detection of petroleum, it is often not enough to observe the rocks at the surface; one must determine as well what formations exist at depth and what their shape is. While this can sometimes be done by actually drilling a well, it is cheaper and simpler to produce an explosion at the surface and listen for "echoes" as the sound waves bounce off layers of rock below. While the principles are relatively simple (they have been used for many years in the detection of earthquakes), the actual construction of the detecting equipment and the exploding of the charges can present surprisingly difficult and unexpected problems.
First, a hole must be drilled for the explosive charge, often fifty or a hundred feet deep. Then, the touchy arrangement of the electronic detecting equipment must be completed. The actual explosion of the dynamite is perhaps the most difficult step. Dr. Heroy noted that his teams have become involved with runaway wagons, pregnant minks, and broken turkey eggs, as a result of the explosions. "The eggs," he added, "never existed. The fellow involved just thought he could nick us for some cash."
Dr. Heroy's lectures covered the principles of geophysical exploration as well as any textbook, but his material went further, presenting for the geology majors, many of whom might become involved with this very field of work, some of the actual problems involved in translating the principles into the needed results.
IF we seem to have wandered away from the three-term system, it has been so that we could view it now in better perspective. We have seen something of the scope of the Geology Department's operations over the course of a year. The students themselves traveled to the Catskills and Quebec (by the way of the varved-clay banks of Mink Brook) in their study of geology in the field, and outside material on contemporary research ranged from paleontology to geophysics and from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to the oil-rich Gulf Coast.
Under the three-term system, these additions to the curriculum will continue; in fact, they will expand. It is planned that the major, in the spring term of junior year, will take three geology courses together. Freed, more or less, from stringent ties with Hanover, he will be able to range farther afield on coordinated field trips. Plans are not definite, but there is hope that Dartmouth geology majors, under the new system, will have time to study in detail the Appalachians, long a type area for structural geology. There is a vague hope that aerial transportation may be available, allowing a study of the effects of geology on landforms firsthand, through the windows of a Flying Boxcar.
This new idea will serve two purposes. It will attempt to allow wider field study, but it will also act to draw together the material of the textbook and the complementary studies in the field. Thus, a student will be learning the theory at the same time that he studies the results in the field. There will not be, as there has too often been, a lag between the classroom theory and field study.
The invitation of guest speakers in Geology will continue, always aimed at obtaining lecturers such as Dr. Thorsteinsson and Mr. Heroy, who are actively involved in the research which they present and discuss for the student. There is also a vague whisper of a Senior Honors Program, which would encourage independent research on the part of the major.
In short, then, this three-term year sees the Department of Geology continuing and advancing its aims of bringing the student out of the classroom and into contact with geology in the outside world. The plans for the new system look promising indeed, and it is not too much to hope that, if the present balance between inside learning and outside experience can be retained and expanded, the Geology Department will present a course of study in which "excellence of education" and "independence in learning" will dovetail to provide the student with a first-class experience in his chosen field.
Prof. John B. Lyons of the Geology Department discusses ore deposits with Dartmouth students in a pyrite-copper mine near Weedon, P. Q., on a class field trip to Canada.
Dr. Raymond Thorsteinsson of the Canadian Geological Survey discusses his arctic research with a graduate student during his visit to the Dartmouth campus last spring.
William B. Heroy '37, vice president of the Geotechnical Corp. of Dallas, lectures in Hanover and indicates a Gulf Coast area where geophysics is widely used.
