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You are browsing the archive for geologic misconceptions Archives - Magma Cum Laude.

10 March 2012

Learning moments in geology movies

Between digging into fluid dynamics papers, figuring out stability fields for alteration minerals and generally dealing with being a grad student, I haven’t had a lot of time to post lately. (Plus I had to do my taxes this weekend…) But I did get great comments on the “Survival Geology” post, especially about using movies and TV to teach science, and I thought I’d run with some thoughts on those. …

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9 November 2010

Common mistakes in reporting on volcanic eruptions

Volcanoes have been getting a lot of media attention this year, which is not surprising; natural disasters make for exciting stories. But your average reporter is likely not going to hold themselves to the same standards of research that science writers do, which ends up being detrimental to everyone, including their readers. Part of this may be because natural disaster stories are quickly written and not well fact-checked in an …

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25 November 2009

Flatirons ≠ pyramids, but they’re still cool

I’ve noticed a few stories recently about Sam Osmanagich, a Bosnian archaeology enthusiast who claims to have discovered several 12,000-year-old ‘pyramids’ in the Balkans. The whole ‘pyramid’ saga mainly concerns a case of mistaken identity – the pyramids are just hills – and Indiana-Jones-style archaeology (by which I mean not very methodical, scientific or objective) on Osmanagich’s part, and you can read more about it at the links below: National …

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14 January 2008

Hot, gooey fillings

My least favorite geological misconception would have to be one that I come across a lot as an aspiring volcanologist: The Earth’s mantle is a molten sea of liquid, and the crust “floats” on it. Now, I suppose this is a perfectly good way to provide a simple explanation to young children who are too young to understand the rheology of rock in the mantle, or the fact that it …

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