Your assignment should be a brief report on some new thing that has been discovered/reported any time in the last year (i.e. September 2012 or more recently) that is directly relevant to this course (use the syllabus as a guide). The subject can literally be anything that is relevant to this course. Examples include a fresh report on the geology of some particular area or formation, some new fossil discovery, or a specific oil or gas field that has been brought on-stream. You might wish to deal with the economic, environmental, or sociological impact or implications of something to do with the geology, most likely resource geology, of Western Canada, or perhaps a mass movement/landslide. Your example or case history must be from Western Canada; the Lac Mégantic disaster is not eligible.
Your paper should be written at a level appropriate to a second year science course, and comprehensible to a reader with an introductory course background. That is, if you were to read it as an oral presentation, people should not be lost, nor insulted by the paper being “dumbed down” too much either.
FORMAT
Your report will be hard copy, maximum one page, with 1” margins all around, double-spaced, and using 12-point font. There should be no cover page; the top line should read:
Do not do a separate abstract or conclusion section; keep it simple. The exceptions to the one-page limit are as follows: 1) you may put your reference(s) on the back of the single page [no staples, no cover pages, just one sheet of paper], and 2) figures may also be put on the back of your single page.
Your report must include what your source or sources happen to be (e.g. journal, on-line journal, web page, and when you accessed it). Multiple sources are allowed, but given the size of the assignment, not necessary and may make things too complicated. Course texts and materials are not allowable sources. I am not going to enforce a particular format for references, but it needs to be sufficiently complete for me or anyone else to track down. If you have multiple references, be sure to attribute information in your report to the appropriate source(s); if you have but one reference, it is understood to be the authority for all information in the report.
