Covers sediment texture and composition, the physics of entrainment and transport, bedform development, depositional environments and their characteristic facies, and the principles of stratigraphic interpretation.
The course insists on the separation of description from interpretation. Students learn to log a section, describe a core and record grain size, sorting, fabric and sedimentary structures before being asked what any of it means. This is the reverse of the order most students would prefer and it produces better geologists, because an interpretation recorded as an observation cannot later be revisited.
Laboratory work uses core material from the department's collection, including recent recoveries from the shelf edge. Field sessions examine modern depositional environments in the Aldwych estuary.