You are browsing the archive for April 2011 - Mountain Beltway.
29 April 2011
Friday fold: quirky quartz vein
This is a sample from the teaching collection at George Mason University: The swirly folds exhibited by this quartz vein reminds me of von Karman vortices. Happy Friday! For me, it’s the last day of classes of the spring semester at NOVA, though GMU is still in session for a couple more weeks. I’m grateful at the advent of warm weather, the sun, the promise of travel to western lands …
25 April 2011
Two joints
Stopped at Sideling Hill, Maryland, a few weeks back with my three Honors students, on our way to Pittsburgh for the northeast/north-central GSA section meeting. Robin took this photo of me with some sandstone beds that reveal two nice examples of joint anatomy, complementary in their structure: First focus in on the area right of where my finger is pointing. It shows well-expressed plumose structure, little lines that point in …
23 April 2011
Macromoth
Shot this on Friday with my iPhone, with student David’s hand lens held in front of it. Nice look at a resting moth: Not bad, eh? Anyone else got any recent iPhone macro photography to share?
20 April 2011
Just add water
My friend JT, who got her MS in geology at the University of Maryland when I did, is now at the Colorado School of Mines working on her PhD in Environmental Science and Engineering. A water main broke outside her house this morning, and I’m pleased that her first thought was to photo-document the resulting sedimentary structures for me. She says: “14 inch water main broke and there was a …
19 April 2011
Big lumps
I don’t have much time to blog this day/week/month, so here are two stromatolite images from downstream of Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, Montana. This is the same area where I was attacked by a voracious stromatolitic Pac-man, of course. For more on the geology of GNP, see Filip’s post here.
17 April 2011
Explore the DGMR rock garden
I shot this gigapan (900 images) last Thursday during the lunch break of the annual “Geology of Virginia” symposium hosted by the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Geology and Mineral Resources. It shows the rock garden outside the DGMR’s offices in Charlottesville, a place where they have collected charismatic megasamples from across the state’s five physiographic provinces as a showcase for the diversity of Virginia’s geology. You can explore the …
15 April 2011
Friday fold: A cold one
The Friday fold is glimpsed from Google Earth. Atop a valley glacier in south-central Alaska’s Kenai mountain range, a fold of “transverse moraine” displays parasitic folds.
14 April 2011
Where on (Google) Earth #280
My former student Jared Fortner (now at Radford University) won Wo(G)E #279 with his immediate recognition of the tsingy of Madagascar. Jared asked that I host the next edition here also: Click on the image for the full screenshot: make it bigger and give it some context. Where is this place? Why should anyone care? First person to (a) identify the location and (b) describe why it’s interesting gets the …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.