Customer Reviews

Laboratory Manual in Physical Geology (6th Edition)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I inherited this lab manual when I started teaching physical geology this semester, and I told my students to return it to the bookstore. It contains factual errors (such as referring to hornblende and other non-metallic minerals as metallic, which they are not - metallic minerals are opaque in thin section), and the pedagogy is highly questionable. In the rock and mineral sections, it relies too heavily on photographs. Students already have a tendency to want to simply match minerals and rocks to pictures, which doesn't work, and this book encourages this. The book is too much talk and not enough action. Students in a lab should be guided to work with objects, not to simply answer questions out of a book. There is too much explanation provided, with little left for students to figure out on their own. Labs should be presented to students as mysteries to be solved, and this book takes all the mystery out of everything.

This "lab manual" is VERY thick and far too wordy. Really, it's more of a spiral-bound textbook than a lab manual. Additionally, the lab questions appear in list format at the end of each section, so there is virtually no standardized answersheet for students to record their work on. That not only makes it harder on the students, but efficient grading is nearly impossible unless the instructor makes his/her own taylor-made answer sheets for the students to use on EACH lab. As if that weren't bad enough, the lab manual's companion web site is horrid. I am amazed that the AGI and the NAGT produced this lab manual.

I bought this book for my Geol 110 class at the University of Maryland in College Park. It's completely unlike every other lab manual I've used in college. It does not directly relate to the lab project, its more like a textbook or information packet to prepare you for the concepts you'll cover in lab. It has glossy pages instead of the usual paper so I'm discouraged from writing notes and lab findings in it. I feel like we probably could have gotten this information out of our normal textbook rather than buying a separate lab manual.

I found this manual to be straightforward in its instructions and logically ordered in its activities. It also has a nice section for identifying different rocks and minerals.

Publishers are driving me nuts with their inflated prices...they made a small number of edition #6 which was considered their best one and then let their supplies run out so that schools would have to buy their "new" one. After flipping through it, it is clear that it is nearly identical to the sixth edition lab manual. Such a waste.

DJS9 should not be trusted with time sensitive orders. Placed order 2 weeks ago, and he only now cancels order without any peep before hand, I already missed 2 hmwk assignments.

I was in a bind when it was time to buy my textbooks, so I bought the the 7th edition instead of the $65 used copy of the 8th edition at college. This served me very well in my geology lab, and all of the transparent sheets were included. What a steal!

I received the Lab manual just in time for class. The local book store has ridiculous pricing so I looked on amazon where it was much more affordable. Great quality since it was new. Too bad once I get done with it I wont be able to sell it back. There are lots of little diagrams to cut out. Hope this helps.

I bought this book for a geology lab i took for a semester. This book contained general information about geology and Lab activities that were most of the time enjoyable. When i looked for this book online i found that Amazon offers the lowest price for the book brand new.

This book was in excellent condition. Not only did the previous owner take good care of it but they also filled in all of the missing page numbers(in light pencil) for easy reference and even left some helpful notes that didnt obstruct any of the original content.