You are browsing the archive for September 2011 - Page 2 of 3 - Mountain Beltway.
16 September 2011
Turbidity in Chesapeake Bay
Hurricane Irene passed this way two weeks ago, and dumped a lot of rain on the mid-Atlantic region and the northeast. As a result, runoff increased, rivers swelled, and sediment was mobilized. Some of that sediment was suspended and transported downstream. On Tuesday, I got this e-mail from my colleague Ken Rasmussen, who took students out on an oceanography field trip to Chesapeake Bay a week after the storm: Was …
Friday fold: Pinelog Formation
Reader Jacob Langseth sent in this image of a lovely fold that he recently saw in the Blue Ridge province of Georgia. It’s located in an old CCC rock quarry, off of the Pine Log Creek Trail system, in Bartow County. You can click on that first image to make it bigger and see a bit more context. Nice differential weathering, eh? …Or you can just keep scrolling down, to …
15 September 2011
Two pleochroism animated GIFs
Biotite in granite: Riebeckite: Fast and slow versions of each. Wanted to post these ASAP, so someone can use them for the Geology Word of the Week…
14 September 2011
Is “Tertiary” archaic?
Jack and Drumlin are visiting for the day from their usual home.
13 September 2011
More earthquake damage
These are all in the northern stairwell between the 2nd and 3rd floors of the Godwin Building here on the Annandale campus of NOVA. The cement blocks have clearly separated along their mortared edges, and the disruption of the paint layer in a series of en echelon fractures reveals that deeper structural issue. I find this a bit scary. I have no information about what, if anything, is being done …
12 September 2011
Clinker
“Clinker” is an interesting rock type seen in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. It forms when a coal seam catches fire, and cooks the rock above and below it, including the potential for partially melting the strata immediately above. Check out a few images of this intriguing rock here.
10 September 2011
A dismaying course, part II: evolution
Picking up where we left off on Thursday’s post on the relationship between the 2011 Republican presidential hopefuls and science, we examined their statements on climate change. Today, we look at the other information compiled by NPR, their statements on evolution. Michele Bachmann I support intelligent design. What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for …
9 September 2011
Friday fold: just Kidding
You’re looking here at Mount Kidd, a peak in the Front Ranges of the Canadian Rockies that displays a tight anticline/syncline duo superimposed on the strata of the Rundle Group. Located on the west side of Highway 40, the Kananaskis Trail, south of the trans-Canada Highway, this mountain shows us what happens with Carboniferous-aged carbonates got squished and squeezed during the construction of the Canadian Rockies (what in the U.S. …
8 September 2011
A dismaying course, part I: climate change
You may have heard that the Republican party has been embracing non-scientific and anti-scientific positions lately. National Public Radio compiled a bunch of quotations reflecting this trend on their website yesterday. I thought I might take a moment here on the blog to critique their statements (both pros and cons), and then reflect on why, in total, the Republican trend towards anti-science strikes me as a dismaying course for my …
7 September 2011
Another updated aftershock plot…
A up-to-date tally of the aftershocks from the Mineral, Virginia earthquake is presented as a time vs. magnitude plot.
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.