Strike and Dip Experiment

Submitted by
Jampel Tshering
02180064
BE Civil, Second Year
Experiment 1: Dip and strike Measurement

Aim: Measurement of Strike and Dip of any random rock or stone

Theory:

Strike and dip is a measurement convention used to describe the orientation, or attitude, of a planar
geologic feature. A feature’s is the azimuth of an imagined horizontal line across the plane, and its dip is
the angle of inclination measured downward from horizontal.

Materials Required:

1. Smartphone (installed with clinometers app and My GPS Coordinates app and Geoclino app).
2. A bottle of water.
3. Book and pencil.

Working of Clinometer app and my GPS Coordinates app:

Clinometer is a mobile app that functions similar or same like clinometers compass or like any other
devices that is used to find strike and dip of rock outcrops. It uses the phones compass and orientation
sensors to measure the angle of dip and strike. To measure the dip the phone compass is placed in East
and West direction in place of North and South direction. And to measure the strike angle, the phone is
placed perpendicular to the dip direction.

Geoclino app is also a mobile app but it is more reliable because we can get the dip and strike
measurement directly by keeping the phone along the direction of flow of water.

My GPS Coordinates app is used to find the latitude and longitude of any region. The app uses device
location of a phone and camera, and automatically we can find latitude and longitude.

Procedure:

1. Using the right hand thumb rule but pointing four fingers downward and thumb perpendicular to
fingers I assumed the direction of dip by the four fingers and direction of strike by the thumb.
And to be more precise I poured water over the rocks so that the direction of flow of water gives
the direction of dip.
2. Then I drew a parallel line along the flow of water and a perpendicular line from the direction of
flow of water.
3. To measure the dip I placed my phone parallel or along the direction of flow of water in such a
way that east and west of the clinometer are facing North and South. The dip angle was found to
be 340.
4. And to measure the strike, I placed my phone compass along the strike line which was found
using right hand thumb rule and also by keeping perpendicular to the dip direction. I was able to
keep the phone perpendicular accurately with the help of leveling bubble fount in the clionto
meter app. The strike measured was 330.
 5. And lastly to verify my reading I used Geoclinio app. The result was not exactly same but was
very close to my experiment with the Clinometer app. The result I found with the help of
Geoclino app was Strike: N31E and Dip: 32E.

Fig 1: pouring water on the rock feature and using right hand thumb rule marking with pencil.

Clinometer

Fig2. Bubble for orientation Fig3. Dip measurement Fig4. Strike measurement
Geoclino app.

Fig5. Geoclino app to measure strike and dip.

Result:

Location: Lobesa, Punakha

Latitude: N27025.52328”

Longitude: E89052’37.2792”

Clintometer; Strike: 330 & Dip: 340

Geoclino; Strike: N31E & Dip: 32E

Conclusion:

Since I did not have any measuring device to calculate the dip and strike of a rock I simply downloaded
Clinometer app which turned out to be very effective and accurate in measuring strike and dip. The
direction of dip and strike line can found out using right hand thumb rule and also the direction of dip can
be found out by pouring the water onto the rock where direction of flow of water gives the direction of
dip. And since Clinometer app do not have the feature to locate latitude and longitude I used My GPS
coordinates app to find out the location of latitude and longitude. And to check the accuracy of my
reading I used geoclion app as it is very convenient compared to clintometer since it requires less work
with high accuracy.