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Figure 4. Ammonite from Semington, Wiltshire, England. ©2010 Google Inc. Image GetMapping plc. Online version can be rotated, and is available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/GSATG257.S5.
GSA TODAY | AUGUST 2016 vertical sliders. A web-based virtual globe hides irrelevant menu to compete with onsite, we need to give students control over
options that could be distracting to wanderlust-prone students manipulable virtual specimens. Students engaged in physical
and is accessible via mobile devices. Web-based presentation is fieldwork can also benefit, for example, by creating and uploading
important for building large searchable databases of virtual speci- models for their instructors or peers to help identify. Smartphone
mens in the future. Because HTML, KML, COLLADA, and glTF technology opens up the possibility of data collection by non-
files are human-readable (not binary computer code), tags in professional citizen scientists. Crowd-sourcing in geoscience
multiple languages can be added for search purposes. (Whitmeyer and De Paor, 2014) has been limited by the need for
advanced skills, however, citizens can create 3D models and share
CHANGING VIRTUAL ROCKS WITH TIME them with remote experts. In Project Mosul (2016), archaeologists
virtually rebuilt artifacts destroyed by ISIS militants using crowd-
Many undergraduate students have great difficulty under- sourced tourist photographs. That project has extended to include
standing length and time scales of rock formation and change virtual reconstruction of Katmandu’s cultural sites following the
(Kortz and Murray, 2009). Virtual rocks can potentially help 2015 earthquake. Geoscientists with access to vulnerable sites can
them visualize changes such as weathering, deformation, and build image collections in advance of potential destructive events
metamorphism. For example, the KMZ downloads include a such as earthquakes, fires, floods, etc. (e.g., Ure, 2015). Instructors
Google Earth view of New England with an emergent crustal can ask every student in a class to take a cellphone photo of a spec-
block that is raised 20 km revealing the depth of garnet grade imen or outcrop from a variety of angles and build a model to
metamorphism. Students can zoom into the block’s base and find which all students feel they have contributed.
a virtual rock in which virtual garnet crystals grow with time. The
speed of the simulation can be controlled using the Google Earth Another justification for virtual rocks is their potential use in
time slider. Ultra-slow animations spanning a three-hour lab or a peer review of manuscripts whose analyses and conclusions
three-month course, during which a specimen’s location, shape, or depend critically on the correct identification of specimens.
appearance is gradually modified, may help convey geological Reviewers currently rely on authors to interpret rocks. In future,
scales of space and time. This offers the possibility of viewing they could ask to see 3D models—a more realistic request than
models of weathering, deformation, metamorphism, etc., in what having rocks mailed to them overland. Authors could embed
may feel to students like geological time, because it is so slow virtual specimens in 3D PDF or HTML5 files as supplementary
compared to the pace of their digital lifestyles. documents accompanying publications. As one anonymous
reviewer of this paper wrote,
DISCUSSION
“I would not be surprised if in future, journals required 3D
Computer-generated 3D models of rocks cannot fully replace representations of outcrops and samples used within their publi-
their veriliths, but they can significantly enhance online geosci- cations. The ability to tag these with locations in a publicly avail-
ence education and extend the range of rocks to which both onsite able dataset could revolutionize structural geology and tectonics
and distance education students are exposed. If online classes are research. Imagine investigating a new field area and being able to
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