Why a checklist before every lab
Match preparation to the approved activity. The new learning pathways use supplied data, approved images, or non-destructive observation from a safe route. They do not authorize hammering, scratching unknown minerals, acids, excavation, wading, caves, quarries, wells, or unstable sites. Practical work beyond that scope needs a separate qualified safety review and supervision.
Use the two-visit observation plan or its photograph alternative. Record evidence and uncertainty; do not approach a hazard to obtain a measurement. A checklist or classroom calculation is not an engineering or site-safety clearance.
The goal is not to follow rules. It is to walk to the bench already knowing the hazards, the steps, and the observations you expect.
1 — Safety
Nothing below this section happens until everything in it is done. No exceptions, every Field & Lab Day, every time.
- Activity, location, access permission, weather, and supervision approved before starting; stay on the safe route.
- Use only known, approved display specimens or supplied images. Do not taste, powder, split, or scratch unknown material.
- Keep heavy specimens stable and follow the instructor's handling and protective-equipment requirements.
- No acid or reactive test is required by the new data/observation work; do not substitute an unreviewed home procedure.
- Do not collect unknown fibrous, dusty, or radioactive materials or enter a hazardous exposure to get a better view.
- Running water and a first-aid kit located — you know where each one is before you start, in case of a scratch or an acid splash.
- A spot set aside for returning specimens — you know exactly where each rock and mineral goes back so the set stays complete.
2 — Setup
With safety confirmed, build the bench so the work flows without scrambling mid-test.
- The full procedure read end to end — not skimmed — so you know what step comes next.
- All specimens gathered, numbered, and laid out in the order the procedure calls for — igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic, and the common minerals kept apart so labels don't get mixed.
- Hand lens, streak plate, and Mohs hardness kit (or the individual testers — steel nail, glass plate, copper penny) selected to match the properties the step asks you to test.
- Geologic map and any cross-sections unrolled and oriented; you know which features you need to read and record.
- The assigned reference data and specimen or image identifiers are available, including any supplied historical test results.
- The observation positions, map scale, and measurement limits are agreed before the visit; no hammer, excavation, or water sampling is needed.
- Field notebook open to a fresh, dated page with the title and question already written.
3 — Readiness: the pre-lab questions
This is the section that separates a technician from a geologist. Before the first observation, the student should be able to answer these in writing — in the field notebook, in their own words.
- What is the question? State, in one sentence, what this Field & Lab Day is trying to find out or identify.
- What is the geology? Write the key principle the day depends on — superposition, the rock cycle, Mohs relative hardness, or the carbonate acid test.
- What is my prediction? A specific expectation — the likely mineral from its luster, whether the sample will fizz in dilute acid, roughly where it should fall on the hardness scale.
- What am I observing, and how will I record it? Name every property you will test — streak, hardness, luster, cleavage — and how you will note it.
- What could go wrong? Identify the one or two steps most likely to introduce error, and how you will minimize them.
- What does success look like? Know, before you begin, what a reasonable identification would be — so an impossible result raises a flag at the bench, not a week later.
A student who answers all six is not guessing their way through a recipe — they are running a Field & Lab Day they understand, with results they can already roughly anticipate. That is exactly the readiness the lab-notebook entry is built to capture, and the kind of preparation a lab defense is designed to reward.