On Saturday March 29, 2014 the geology class at Stockton held a field trip. We went all over eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey to look at different soil deposits and rock formations.
Our first stop was to see soil deposits from a river that no longer exists. We went to a sand pit and looked at the different layers and formations in the cross section that had been cut out. It was really cool to be able to look at the cross section and see the dip in the layers where the trough of the stream used to flow. It was also fascinating to see the difference in the deposits from the river. Each layer was sorted differently, the lower layers were mostly sand but the higher up (or younger the layer) the more pebbles and cobbles there were.
The next stop was in a field with a hill. This hill was exposed to weathering and we could once again see the different layers in it. However, this one was mostly fine grained sand and we were able to determine that this layer of deposits belonged blow the first set of deposits we saw.
After that we walked down the road and dug a hole in the ground. We looked at this clay material and once again were able to determine it’s placement in geologic time. This deposit belonged under the previous one. However, you could tell that there had been time missing between the deposits because of the drastic change in material composition. We then filled up the hole and went to another location.
At the next location we walked down a slope to a river to look at the different rocks in the area and a corresponding fault line. The rocks in the river were mostly gneiss, a metamorphic rock, and had been disturbed by a fault. The fault is no longer active but when it was, it created a very prominent mark which is still there to be observed today. Then we looked at a bridge that crossed the river and the calcite dripping from it. We analyzed the situation to determine where it is coming from and why.
We stopped for lunch quick and then headed to the last location. At the last place we stopped, we observed a wall of rock. This wall had many fractures in it and to describe these fractures, we determined that they were folds in the rocks. We analyzed samples and determined the rocks at this location to be schist, another type of metamorphic rock.
This field trip was awesome especially for any geology majors out there! It was a lot of fun because we were walking around in nature and learning about what different processes on earth are and their result. I would highly recommend geology field trips to anyone who likes to learn and likes nature.