21 February 2012

New GigaPans: source and sediment

Posted by Callan Bentley

Here’s two new GigaPan images that the M.A.G.I.C.* team has produced (my student Robin R. is responsible for both of these images) of samples I collected a few years ago in Hawai’i. Part of my vision for this collection is to have thematically-connected images that instructors could use to put together online geologic assignments for their students. Consider these two images, for instance. One is of a cobble of porphyritic, vesicular basalt, and the second, of sand collected in a small cove a few feet away.

link

link

It seems to me that students could use images like these in an introductory lab assignment on igneous rocks (crystal nucleation and growth, lava eruption and degassing), or in a sedimentary lab, thinking about the relationship between sedimentary characteristics and provenance. The professor could even assign students to make a rough quantification of how much basalt had to be weathered to generate a given volume of this sand. The professor could ask about other sources of particles in the sand, like orange/white shell fragments.

Other themes of connected GigaPans that occur to me:

Appalachian geology or Rocky Mountain geology (location is the theme)

Subduction zone geology, clastic sedimentation geology, karst geology (process is the theme)

Hand-samples, sediment samples, and outcrops from each physiographic province (scale is the theme)

An online sample set for Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Economic Geology, Structural Geology, etc. (an academic program is the theme)

What sorts of themes can you dream up that it would be useful to have gigapixel-resolution imagery for? How can we help you?

____________________________________

* M.A.G.I.C. = Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection