This short course aims to introduce non-geologists to the structural geological and petrological principles that are used by geologists to study system earth.

The data available to geologists is often minimal, incomplete, and representative only for part of the geological history. Besides learning the field techniques that are needed to take measurements and acquire data, geologists also need to develop a logical way of thinking to overcome these challenges and to solve this complex puzzle.

In this course we briefly introduce the following subjects:
1) Geology rocks: Introduction to the principles of geology.
2) Moving rocks: The basics of plate tectonics.
3) Breaking rocks: From lab experiments to natural examples.
4) Dating rocks: Absolute and relative dating of rocks.
5) Shaping rocks: Using the morphology of landscapes as tectonic constraints.
6) Q&A!

Our aim is not to make you the next specialist in geology, but we will try and make you aware of the challenges a geologist faces when they go out into the field. We will also address currently used methodologies for the collection of geological data, to give other earth scientists a feel for the capabilities and limitations of geological research.

This course is given by Early Career Scientists and forms a quintet with the short courses on ‘Geodynamics 101’, ‘Seismology 101’, ‘Tectonics 101’, and ‘Geodesy 101’. For this reason, we will also explain what kind of information we expect from the fields of geodynamics, seismology and geodesy, and we hope to receive input on the kind of information you could use from our side.