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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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.