Student's Abstact:
    The Earth's surface consists of many different moving plates creating plate tectonics. The Pacific plate in specific has all different plate boundaries around its edges. Looking at the Pacific plate as the plate that is moving one can determine the relative velocity and direction of the plate by using Euler Poles. The Pacific plate moves in the same general direction throughout the plate boundaries. Yet its velocities vary with the boundaries. At spreading boundaries such as the spreading ridge of the Eastern Pacific Rise which is a boundary between the Pacific plate and the Nazca Plate a total velocity of 14.3 cm/yr was observed. On the other side of the Pacific plate at subduction zones such as the New Guinea Trench, velocities of similar magnitude can be observed. This tells us that in part, the Pacific plate gets destroyed as fast as it is created.  Relative to the creation and destruction velocities, velocities along transform faults such as the San Andreas Fault are smaller. The  movements along the transform faults have a smaller velocity because of the direction the plate is moving. The creation and destruction of the plate creates a pull and push effect which is why the plates move a lot faster along these boundaries. When a plate moves along another plate in a transform fault, the velocity is defined by the overall speed of the plates moving past each other. There is a lot of friction in this area and the velocity is therefore smaller than that of the ridge/trench system. The plate overall is moving in a West, North West direction.

TA comments:
This is a great abstract, although the interpretations for the transform faults are a bit off, but the student is still doing what we want to see:  thinking about your results in terms of geology and inferring underlying processes/reasons for observations.  Making connections between things like fast spreading rates on one side of the Pacific with fast subduction on the other is exactly what we were hoping you would see.

Student abstract:
In this lab we are learning how to calculate the velocity of a point on one plate relative to another plate. Specifically, we are using circum-Pacific points in order to ascertain the velocity of the Pacific Plate relative to the surrounding plates. As these motions occur on a globe, we will be using spherical geometry in conjunction with both the appropriate Euler poles and angular velocity vectors to determine the magnitude of the relative motion at each location point. The results of these motions reveal a concentration of spreading centers and transform margins on the Eastern edge of the Pacific Plate, while convergent margins are found on the Western edge. There is also an interesting occurrence of highly oblique convergence in the South Pacific in the region containing New Zealand's South Island and the Macquarie Ridge. The locations of these boundaries combined with the high rates at which the Pacific Plate is moving westward support the idea that the Pacific Ocean is closing, and quite quickly at that.

TA comment: This is a good abstract.  A definition of Euler poles squeezed into the first or second sentence would have been nice.  The last sentence was what got this student a high grade for the abstract even though it was a bit short.

Both abstracts:

Neither abstract spends time describing in detail the procedure.  Generally you don't want to talk too much about procedure and you should try to focus more on the big picture of the lab and why you did it.

A sentence describing the general northwesterly motion of the pacific relative to the surrounding plates would have convinced us that the student fully understands what we are trying to teach them, or in other words a grade of 50 out of 50.

Happy abstracting,
Alex