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6 June 2011
DCSWA tour
Yesterday, I took about fifteen members of the DC Science Writer’s Association on a walking tour of DC’s geology. I was honored to present the capital city’s epic geologic story to an esteemed crowd of professional science writers from Nature, Science, the National Academies, the National Institutes of Health, the Washington Post, and other institutions. Here are a few photos that Harvey Leifert took on the trip: …Evidently I gesticulate …
27 May 2011
Friday fold(s): the Outdoor Lab
Today’s Friday fold takes me back 25 years, to when I visited the Outdoor Lab with my science class in Arlington County Public Schools. I revisited this exemplary outdoor education facility on Tuesday, at the invitation of its director, Neil Heinekamp. Neil wanted a geology “expert” to take a look at their rocks, and I wanted a chance to check out their rocks as part of my expanding examination of …
9 April 2011
Plaster joint
Here’s a joint extracted from gelatin during this year’s GMU structural geology “Make a Joint” exercise: A soda bottle full of congealed gelatin serves a “rock.” We then use construction clamps to impart a stress field to the gelatin bottle. Into it, we inject fluid plaster of Paris. The extra pore fluid pressure causes a joint to form, displaying all the characteristic anatomy. Here’s the other side: Here are some …
8 March 2011
A couple other Montana shots
Friday’s prompt to post the French Thrust shot gave me the opportunity to dig into my “Rockies” folder a bit. Here’s two other shots from my inaugural summer leading my Geology 295 field class out there. Hiking the trail to Grinnell Glacier: …It looks like we’re in the Appekunny Formation here, third from the bottom in the stack of Belt Supergroup strata at Glacier. In the distance, you can see …
16 February 2011
Outcrops of the LaHood Conglomerate
Remember the LaHood Conglomerate? Here’s a few field photos of my Rockies class visiting it last July: Amphibolite clast: Marble clast: I love how well-rounded these clasts can be — like eggs. When these grains were loose cobbles, tumbling down into the Belt Sea, the Earth was only 3 to 3.5 billion years old. The rivers which carried them downhill flowed past a landscape devoid of plants and animals. Since …
20 January 2011
A warm, glowing feeling
Just got this in an email: “Hi professor Bentley, This is [redacted], I had you for Geology last Spring. I just wanted to email you to first off, thank you, and second off, to ask some questions. Before I took your class Science was my worst subject , and I did everything to avoid taking it. I ended up needing it so I chose Geology since i was very slightly …
2 December 2010
How to make a Grand Canyon in seven easy steps
This series of cartoon images ended up on the board yesterday in Historical Geology lab… E = erosion D = deposition Yes, oversimplified: I didn’t include the newest thinking about the subtleties involved in putting together the Brahma and Vishnu Schists and Zoroaster Granite, and I didn’t include mention of faulting (either ancient or more recent). And no mention of magmatism – either of the Cardenas generation, or the more …
27 September 2010
Deducing my first anticline
When I was done with my sophomore year at William & Mary, I embarked on a time-honored tradition among W&M geology majors: the Geology 310 Colorado Plateau field course. Jess alluded to this same course in her Magma Cum Laude contribution to this month’s Accretionary Wedge geology blog “carnival,” too. My version of Geology 310 was led by the legendary Gerald Johnson (a.k.a. “Dr J”), a dynamic and enthusiastic educator …
22 August 2010
Geology of Massanutten Mountain, Virginia
Here’s a new video from Greg Willis, the same guy who brought us a fine video on Piedmont geology. In this new opus (20 minutes), Greg details the geology of the Massanutten Synclinorium (Shenandoah Valley, Massanutten Mountain, and Fort Valley) in western Virginia. WordPress isn’t letting me embed it here, but you should go and check it out!
21 August 2010
Volcanic features of the Rockies trip
This weekend, I wanted to share some of the best work from this year’s Rockies field course students. Let’s start with a nice video by Marcelo Arispe: I thought this was a really nice job making a video using still images and a voiceover. The only thing I would change would be in the Gallatin Range basalt column discussion: cooling lava loses volume, not mass. Nice work, Marcelo!
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.