GEOGRAPHY 120 (Section 6515): Physical Geography

INSTRUCTOR: Jeffrey P. Schaffer (Cell: 707-287-7390; Email: jeffreypschaffer@yahoo.com)

TEXT: Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation, 9th edition, by McKnight and Hess

CLASSROOM: This class, like the lab class Geography 120L, meets in LA-207, not LA-100.

HOURS: Nine Mondays from 6:10 PM to 9:00 PM. These Mondays are: January 26, February 9, February 23, March 9, March 23, April 6, April 20, May 4, and May 18.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This is a three-unit introductory course in Physical Geography which, when combined with Physical Geography Laboratory (Geography 120L), is designed to satisfy the physical science requirement for transfer to four-year institutions.

This Geography 120 PACE course is composed of two parts, 1) a series of 7 one-hour videos, Planet Earth, and 2) 9 three-hour class sessions that cover traditional physical-geography subjects.

The 7 videos are: The Living Machine, The Blue Planet, The Climate Puzzle, Tales From Other Worlds, Gifts From The Sea, The Solar Sea, and Fate of the Earth. You can watch them on television (see broadcast schedule on handout), check them out from the campus library, view them in the library’s media center, rent them, or view them on-line (see handout for details). These are due on the last day of class. No exceptions.

There will be three sets of two three-hour lectures followed by an exam on those two lectures. Your textbook has 20 chapters, and we’ll cover some of them in part. The schedule for Geography 120’s nine Mondays are:

1) January 26 Introduction, Maps, Minerals, and Rocks (Ch. 1, 2, 13)

2) February 9 Volcanism, plutonism, plate tectonics, earthquakes (Ch. 14)

3) February 23 1st exam

4) March 9 Weathering, mass wasting, streams, karst, deserts (Ch. 15, 16, 17, 18)

5) March 23 Glaciated lands, coasts (Ch. 19, 20)

6) April 6 2nd exam

7) April 20 Meteorology: layers of the atmosphere, winds, humidity (Ch. 3, 4, 5)

8) May 4 Air masses, cyclones, tornadoes and hurricanes, world’s climates (Ch. 6, 7, 8)

9) May 18 3rd exam

GRADES: There will be three exams, worth 100 points each for a maximum of 300 points, plus 10 questions for each of the 7 videos for a maximum of 70 points. Grading will be based on what I determine is a fair curve. (Few, if any, students will get 90+% on any exam, which is why I don’t use 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, etc.) The exams will be based mostly on what I emphasize in lecture, not on the textbook. Nevertheless, for most of the presented material you can refer to the textbook to hopefully get a better understanding of the lecture material. This does not apply to geomorphology, which is a flawed branch of science. Answering geomorphology questions based solely on the textbook will result in many wrong answers! The exams will be open notes and the textbook.

CLASSROOM POLICY: One absence is the equivalent of two weeks’ absence in a normal class. You may miss only one class. If you miss two, you can be dropped! (Students who miss some classes tend to get “D”s and “F”s on the exams.) Please turn your cell phones off! No text messaging! Don’t leave class to make phone calls; if you do, don’t bother returning to class. No disruptive behavior, such as unnecessary talking, reading magazines, doing homework, etc.