Educated Erosion

When My Optimism and My Cynicism Collide:

2012-01-27T15:03:00.000-08:00

A lot has already been said about Newt Gingrich's promise of a moon base; however, I still want to talk about it because I sort of agree with the two ways this statement has been met-optimism and cynicism. First lets go with cynicism, it should be obvious this is shameless pandering from a politician who will hedge back and forth on science insulting it or complementing it depending on when it suits him. I am almost positive that if he was elected he would either forget all about or make a half-hearted attempt which wouldn't work. I think The Crux had one of the best cynical responses, and I have to agree with all of their points; however, I don't have to like it.

We should always meet all claims of politicians with skepticism, and just because they pander to our interests (or our dreams) doesn't mean we should throw away our rational thought and embrace them. I do not think many, if any, space professionals, students, or knowledgeable public took these promises at face value, though judging by some of the comments r/space the interested public did, and that's not good. It is very easy for politicians to play to people's emotions on a subject like this, and we have to be careful and not be taken for a ride. So it is a good thing that many people like Neil deGrasse Tyson are coming out to temper expectations. Newt's plan is unworkable, and anybody who pays attention to the space industry knows it won't work.

One last thing about Gingrich, in an early speech he criticized NASA as an overblown bureaucracy and said they have had "failure after failure" well maybe NASA, like any government agency has a lot of red tape, but are the Mars Exploration Rovers failures? They have outlasted their warranties by an incredible amount. They were supposed to last three months, and their mission duration is now measured in years.

Last year when I told my friends, family, and coworkers that I had an internship with NASA they were astounded and impressed. Why? Because NASA is on the frontier of science, they are the dream. It is the only government agency that continues to inspire everyone from small children dreaming about the moon and stars to college students planning their careers in STEM fields to old men and women thinking about the changes they have seen and the changes yet to come. If you dismiss NASA, you are ignorant of what they have accomplished and I pity you for living in that darkness.

Okay, on the optimistic side I want a moon base! A moon base is an amazing idea, and those of you interested in engineering or space science should go wide-eyed and misty just thinking about it. That was my initial reaction when I heard Newt's statement, then I crashed back down to reality.

However, I couldn't stand the hyper-cynical reactions many people had after the speech, many people who are fascinated with space had a visceral reaction to the speech. And understandingly so, because here is another politician offering something we love for votes with no intention to follow through. Though I can see some good coming from this speech though, maybe a lot of Americans may remember that they love space and they want this base. When they remember they may come looking for information on it, and be exposed to some amazing science and learn a thing or two (or hundred).

Let's not let our cynicism overcome us, this is important and a permanent human presence on another world is something we need to do, not just to prove we can do it, but to give us the ability to do amazing science and to start our manned exploration of the solar system and beyond. And if you don't think our government is investing enough in exploration write to your representatives and tell them so, and if they don't vote the way you want, vote them out. At this point, if we can change a few minds on capital hill that would be an improvement.

An article on io9 has some amazing reasons why; however, I want to go farther. We don't know much about the moon, there is only so much remote sensing and a half a dozen manned missions can tell us. What we need to really understand the moon are boots on the lunar surface. We need planetary scientists doing field work to further our understanding of the moon and how the Earth-Moon system formed. In addition, this will be valuable experience for Mars. Not just in how to live and work in the isolated environment of space travel, but also the development of new scientific tools and field techniques that will be needed. Planetary geologists will need new ways of taking measurements because a space suit isn't as easy to move around in as a flannel shirt and cargo pants. We have been studying the Earth for centuries and we still don't understand every geologic process on it; we need field planetary geologist to map the structure and features of the moon, and then we need field versions of every imaginable discipline of planetary science to really understand the moon. Then we will have to do this for every planet or moon that we want to understand and we can land on, and the adventure will be incredible.

I would love for Gingrich's plan to work, because by the time the moon base was up and working I would be finished with my doctorate and I still young enough to work there. I want that, we live in the future and we should have a moon base.

Update on Rio Grande Rift

2012-01-24T19:29:00.000-08:00

In my last post on the Rio Grande Rift, I was hesitant to say if it was still spreading. I don't have access to all the journals, I had heard some conflicting opinions from a few geologists, and my cursory search didn't find a lot of information. However, the January issue of Geology did have a study dealing with exactly that. And guess what, the rift is spreading, about one inch every forty years, so that's pretty cool. I can't wait to read the full article (once I get my reimbursement check from my school and can afford to pay my student dues to the GSA).

However, due to my status as a college kid with limited funds; I unfortunately did not read about this from a cool source, instead I learned about it from this Yahoo News article which didn't even turn out to be an intelligent source. It doesn't start out bad, but then it starts saying a few things which demonstrate a lack of real understanding about geology. First off, it says this is a very slow pace (direct quote is "paltry rate", and it is compared to Usain Bolt or a landslide or really anything we deal with in our day to day experience. However, this is geology so almost everything happens slowly, so if you are going to say it happens slowly compare it to another plate. It is moving slowly compared to other plates which can move around 2.5 cm a year, while this rift is widening around 1 mm per year, 1/250 slower!

Then, the author makes a comment about controlling the expansion which seems odd and raised a few questions. First, why, it is barely moving and at those rates shouldn't disrupt humans at all; however, stopping the motion would just mean all the energy is pent up and then released when whatever is keeping from moving fails, causing an earthquake. Second, since when is it the goal of geology to stop plate tectonics? I've heard of geo-engineering projects, but I don't think anybody has ever even thought of something this large.

The article did leave a few questions I had unanswered. Do the scientists know if this rate is accelerating, decelerating, or remaining the same? This would be nice to know; is another East African Rift opening up in Southwest America or is this movement dying out. I would like to know this because there are inactive volcanoes around the rift (including near Albuquerque) and it would be nice to know if they might wake up. In addition, does this movement have any implications for earthquakes around the rift, especially in the Sandia Mountains where New Mexico's largest city sits on loosely compacted sediments from the mountains surrounding it oh and an aquifer. So as my Intro to geology professor once (somewhat gleefully) pointed out, should a large earthquake hit the city, the soil would probably liquify and consume large parts of the city.

By the way, I'm not too worried about earthquakes or volcanoes as a result of the spreading; however, it is not a stretch that some people who live in Albuquerque might be, and it would only take a extra sentence worth of effort to soothe these fears. Questions like this is why you should talk to a scientist before you publish a story because now I have to wait to gain anything valuable until I either bum the latest copy of Geology, or get the money to look at it online. Thanks Yahoo News, for all the effort you put into the story.

Erosion vs. Weathering

2012-01-21T12:47:00.000-08:00

I never really explained why I named this blog what I did, but there is a reason. You see, since I'm an undergraduate student (for only two more semesters) I wanted to tell the story of my journey from lowly and ignorant undergraduate through graduate school and into my own career (however long that takes). However, that only makes sense if you know the actual definition of erosion:

Erosion-The physical removal of rock by an agent such as running water, glacial ice, or wind.

And compare that to weathering:

Weathering- The group of processes that change rock at or near the Earth's surface

Now why do I care about that? Well besides confusing the two makes it seem like I feel like my education is disappearing or being torn down some how, the real problem is that erosion is used as a literary device by several people and it is almost always used wrong. Here are two examples:

http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2008/apr/19/halt-us-educational-erosion/

http://chronicle.com/article/Public-Higher-Education-Is/124292/

Now I understand that educational erosion makes a good almost alliteration (look at my blog title) however, they are not describing erosion. They are describing weathering, and there is a fundamental difference.

Weathering can be broken up into two categories, chemical and physical. Physical is the easiest to understand, as it is simply mechanical processes which break apart the source rock. Examples include frost wedging, water running over rocks or rivers down cutting into the ground, wind sand blasting formations, or even animals walking over the same trail numerous times.

Chemical weathering is different. This is when the minerals withing a source rock are changed into different minerals, which is often caused by water. Near Albuquerque are the three peaks, three inactive volcanoes which spewed basaltic lava thousands of years ago. On these volcanoes you can see the mechanical weathering from the water flowing down the slopes creating the classic V-shape indicative of mountain streams. However, the most interesting part is that where the black lava is along the stream, you can see how high the water gets when it does flow. As the once black rocks are turned white where they were submerged in the stream. This is due to chemical weathering, the Calcium Feldspars, indicative to basalts, are chemically weathered into calcite, a much softer mineral, which compromises the integrity of the formation.

Erosion, on the other hand, is all about transportation. So while the forces of weathering and erosion may be the same, the processes are different. Weathering breaks down a mountain, while erosion spreads the pile of rubble far and wide, flattening out the landscape. Some of the mechanisms of erosion include landslides, turbidity flows, rivers, and wind.

So please remember, I'm on an educational journey and my education is not being torn down. Thank you

NASA Tweetup: The Pretweetup-Wednesday

2011-12-07T14:11:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago when I found out that I was picked to attend the Mars Science Laboratory with NASATweetup, I was ecstatic as I would not have expected to have been chosen in a million years. However, I am a college student, and as a college student I do not have much money, so I would like to thank my parents and Aunt Marty for providing me with transportation and lodging for the event.

Originally, MSL was supposed to go up on Friday, so we were going to have the first round of speakers and a tour of KSC on Wednesday then nothing on Thursday and the final round of speakers and the launch on Friday. However, due to a battery malfunction the launch was postponed to Saturday. Changing my travel schedule to accommodate this was actually pretty difficult, and I realized just how isolated my little corner of the world is as it was very difficult to find flights coming back this way on the Sunday after the launch. However, registration and the tour was tentatively still on Wednesday so I had no qualms about going early, and I had never been to Florida and this would be only the second time I had been on the East Coast so I was excited to see something new.

One thing I do have to confess is that I'm not a very social person. In large groups, I have a tendency to sit in the back and keep quiet and it usually takes me a while to feel comfortable around new people and I usually don't start talking until I feel comfortable. So when I arrived in St. Louis around noon and saw the tweet that all events had been postponed until Friday I was scared and thought that I would spend the first two days alone. Luckily, I couldn't be more wrong.

First off, NASATweeps are awesome people, besides the fact that they, as a prerequisite, are Space Nerds, they are incredibly kind and giving. From @conductor222 driving nearly an hour away from the Pre-Tweetup dinner to pick me up from the airport and driving around, to literally everybody stopping and saying hi if they saw you wearing your NASATweetUp badge; every space tweep demonstrated immense kindness and compassion, and on top of that each and every one of them was very interesting to talk to you, as they liked to talk about space which is one of the two coolest conversation topics(the other being geology).

So the Tuesday before the Tweetup passed without incident, I reached my hotel room watched NASA TV for a bit, and went to sleep. Wednesday started slowly @conductor222 picked me up and then we went and picked up @libbydoodle (who thankfully let me use her photographs as mine suck). We found KSC pretty easy; however instead of going to the press accreditation building we went to the employee badging office.

Wrong building

Correct building

They may look similar, but they were on different roads and a fair distance apart (if the press accreditation building was the bulls-eye on the dart board, we hit the wall). After we registered and met some of our fellow space nerds, we then decided to go take pictures of the Astronaut Hall of Fame (it wasn't open yet and it took us a bit to remember and decide to go to the Visitor Center.

We took a lot of pictures, but the area basically boils down to these three sites, at least on the outside. We then decided that we should go check out the Visitor Center as it was open. I don't think any of us knew how much there was to do there, and how it would consume all our time (in a good way, like a whale with an amusement park in its stomach).

The Gate way to Nerdvana

They were ready for the holiday season

As were the Astronauts

We didn't have a solid plan when we entered the gates as there was so much to do. We ended up seeing a 3-D Imax movie about the ISS (highly recommend it) then there was lunch. Afterwards we decided to pay our respects at the Astronaut memorial

Astronaut memorial

The memorial is amazing. First off it is huge, and as you can (somewhat) see it has a mirrored surface with the names of the astronauts engraved into the surface and lit from behind. This creates an amazing effect which makes these heroes name seem to be floating among the clouds.

An engraving of those who have gave their lives in the pursuit of discovery

Here we then met up with @ridingrobots and @french_marc, two other NASATweetup participants, and were able to get a picture with one of them!

@ridingrobots was taking the picture

Afterwards we wandered over to the rocket park which is amazing, I have seen the ones at JSC and the Space History Museum in Alamagordo, but this puts both to shame by the shear size and quantity of the rockets.

I am still fascinated by the Saturn V

This is where we made a mistake, and wandered into the gift shop. You see, I usually have pretty good impulse control; however, I lose this when I become surrounded by amazing space memorabilia.

You look so inviting; little did I know you would take all my money!

I wanted one of everything (so I guess I did control my spending...a bit)

@libbydoodle and I ended up spending way too much time in the gift shop and I ended up with a meteorite.

My Precious!

After an undisclosed amount of time, we left the gift shop (I really don't want to tell you how long) and wandered around a bit. Eventually our wanderings brought us to these two amazing people

who we initially mistook as LEGO employees, which would have been really cool, but you know what assuming makes out of 'u' and 'me'. They were two engineers with decades worth of experience on the shuttle. We ended up talking to them for almost an hour which was one of the most inspirational and informative personal conversations I have ever had, and definitely the most of my conversations with strangers. They talked about the importance of hard work and STEM fields; they talked about their experiences from accidentally sitting on the shuttle toilet while moving components into the ship to the procedures they followed in their jobs. My favorite, though, was how they kept coming back to how you have to move forward, how you can't become complacent with where you are, instead you have to always be moving forward. While this was directed at the Shuttle and the 30 years we spent in the same place, their advice resonates with anybody at any stage of your life. You can become complacent and never strive to improve your lot in life, or you can push forward and achieve new and amazing things.

After about an hour, we had to cut our conversation in order to make it to Dr. John Grotzinger's talk about the geology of Gale Crater (MSL's landing site). It was an interesting and informative talk and made me even more excited for Curiosity to start finding new evidence about early Mars. I also got the opportunity to ask him questions about graduate school and I received some advice about what I should do to get ready.

Some interesting slides from the talk

Dr. Grotzinger, if you are reading this, I would like to apologize for cornering you and asking about grad school

We then were able to explore the Explorer building which had some of my favorite exhibits

Like these awesome posters (does anyone know where you can buy copies?)

And an awesome mockup of Curiosity!

Then, as we are very much adults, Libby and I did the most grown-up thing possible; we played with LEGO blocks! NASA and LEGO were having an event where they were encouraging creativity among kids by having them build their own space themed LEGO designs. These ranged from the highly practical to the highly fanciful

Yep, these kids are having an amazing childhood

@conductor222 had already tried her hand at building, so we felt that we should try to do something as well, which were were pretty enthusiastic about so we hopped right to it. The best part was when the two engineers we talked to earlier stopped by and ended up helping Libby with her rocket and explaining what parts of the rocket would do in real life.

Libby's rocket

And I built a rover with a robotic arm. Its collecting a sample

By this time, we had filled up our day with as much space nerdery as the operating hours of the park would allow, so we headed back to the car for dinner with more space nerds and to rest up for tomorrow. But as we left, we were treated to a beautiful view of rocket park at sunset which was a great way to end the day.

New Mexico Geology: Seas of Gypsum

2011-12-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

Sorry right now I don't have pictures of my own for this, two weekends ago I was going to meet up with family in Alamagordo then visit White Sands, but the family activity ended up taking over twice as long as planned, so it was dark by the time we finished. I will update with better pictures when I get them.

Update: Check out Ron Schott's post about White Sands, he has two amazing GigaPans of the dunes.

In second grade we took a field trip to White Sands, and I still remember that day. It wasn't too far of a drive, just on the other side of the Sierra Blanca, but it was amazing. After we passed through the military sign posts warning us of the dangers should we trespass on to the base, we drove into the national monument. It was like a sea of white stretched out before us as far as we could see; the white waves, frozen in time, just asked for a bunch of little kids to run up and down on and try to sled down. Eventually we gave up on trying to sled down the hills (damn you friction!!!) and instead took to rolling ass over teakettle down the huge dunes, burying each other in the sand and jumping off the dunes into soft(ish) piles of loose sand below us.

White sands is amazing because it is a beautifully bizarre place that illuminates some already pretty awesome geologic processes, but in an unique and beautiful way.

Dune Formation:
White Sands (which is a very original name) is the largest gypsum dune field in the world, and demonstrates the highly variable nature of dune formation. First off, there are Barchan Dunes which are crescent shaped dunes which move in the same direction of their limbs. These dunes move incredibly fast up to 100 meters in a year (hey anything you can measure in terms of years instead of 100's or 1000's or 1x10^6 years is really fast to a geologist). Barchan dunes are common when there isn't much sand and the dunes are free to move across the desert pavement (highly cemented surface common in desert, it is this phenomena which allowed Rommel to quickly move across North Africa in WWII).

Photo Credit: getintravel.com

Then there are Parabolic dunes, which look like Barchan Dunes, but they are going the wrong way. This happens when Barchan Dunes move into areas with more vegetation, the vegetation bogs down the limbs of the dune first and turns them around. The vegetation acts as an anchor and makes these dunes really slow.

When there is plenty of sand, the Barchan Dunes join together into Transverse dunes, which are long lines of wavy sand. This is very common at White Sands.

Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

Evaporite Minerals
If you are not familiar with geology, you might be curious what exactly is Gypsum, and if you are not, you should be curious (don't make the gypsum angry it is probably right behind you, hiding in plain sight). Chemically Gypsum is CaSO4*2H20, translated to Calcium Sulfate (Sulfur plus four Oxygens) and two water molecules within the crystalline structure; it is an ionic compound, like table salt, which means it dissolves in water into ions (a +2 Ca and -2 SO4) and is precipitated out when the water evaporates. If you are unfamiliar with this, take a bowl fill it up with water and then a lot of salt into it, then hang a string where it is only just in the water and tape it to the sides. Put the bowl in a window (or under a heat lamp to speed things up) and as the water evaporates salt will precipitate on the string. SCIENCE!!

One cool thing about this mineral is that crystalline gypsum can come in three forms, satin spar, selenite, and alabaster.

Satin Spar gypsum is fibrous gypsum that has a silky luster (luster refers to the way the mineral interacts with light, so Satin Spar gypsum reflects light similar to the way silk does).

Satin Spar Gypsum in a unique shapePhoto Credit utexes.edu

Selenite is the transparent and colorless (geologists hate the word clear) version of gypsum. In New Mexico you can sometimes find dunes with large selenite crystals within them. A good place to check these out is the Living Desert Zoo and Garden in Carlsbad, NM, which has a whole exhibit dedicated to this feature.

Selenite Hills at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Carlsbad, NM

And Alabaster resembles the sands at White Sands, just clumped together into a soft rock.

An example of Alabaster Gypsum from Geology.com

One important thing to note about Gypsum is that it is all around, as the mineral is used to make wallboard. In addition, Gypsum is used in art and other applications as Plaster of Paris. This application highlights a very cool property of gypsum, remember when I said earlier that Gypsum has two water molecules in its crystal lattice? Well if you heat gypsum you can drive off the water molecules and you end up with annhydrite which is just CaSO4 and if you know anything about making plaster casts, you know that the plaster first comes ground up in a fine powder which is the gypsum that has been ground up and heated which drives off most of the water, then you mix it with water and pour it into you want to make a cast of. The annhydrite then absorbs the water becoming gypsum after it crystallizes thus hardens or sets. Well that's White Sands in a nutshell.

The Fallibility of Heroes

2011-11-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

I have a personal hero, and like all humans he is flawed. However, he is flawed in such a way that I have to question my admiration of him, and I am left wondering what I should think.

I have looked up to Harrison Schmitt for a few years now for a few reasons. First he is the only geologist to walk on another world. Which is an amazing feat, and one that I dream about repeating myself (I doubt this would ever happen). As planetary geology is my dream field, this is the most amazing thing one could do in my eyes, actual field geology on another celestial object, and this alone would make him one of my favorite scientists of all time. I even have a poster taken of the Apollo 17 mission on my wall, I don't know if Dr. Schmitt is the astronaut pictured but there is a 50/50 chance that it is, and I like to think it is him.

This is the image I'm referring to

Dr. Schmitt and I also share something in common, in that we are from the same state, not only from the same state, but we are both from small, southern New Mexican towns whose entire economy rested on the exploitation of a limited resource (copper for him, oil for me). Maybe this isn't the strongest connection; however, growing up I saw the people around me and thought that my home town was like a black hole and the people born or raised there were already past the event horizon. I honestly feared for years that I would never escape, that no matter what I did, there would be no way out. Thus the idea that there were people from the crappy and poor areas of my state (one Political Science professor at my school referred to much of southern New Mexico as the Third World within the First World) had lived the dream filled me with hope and confidence that I was not already past the event horizon, that there was a way out.

However, Dr. Schmitt is a Climate Change denier, a position I find irresponsible and uninformed. He has tried to do a tremendous amount of harm to the good science done by the climate scientists; I wouldn't be so upset about this if he wasn't a good geologist, but his body of work is impressive and he rightly won accolades earlier in his career. Thus to the uniformed his presence among the deniers seems like damning evidence.

It is becoming more and more evident that the position held by Schmitt and others like him is both wrong and dangerous. We see the effects all the time, pacific island nations looking for places to evacuate after the sea swallows their home, heat waves, storms; the evidence is so solid that the pentagon has become concerned that it poses a risk to national security. At times like these we need our best and brightest to look at the evidence without bias. It is pointless to bicker about the reality of situation, when its consequences are already barreling down on you.

I would like to remember Dr. Schmitt as the type of person I want to be, a brave explorer who advanced the cause of science both by increasing our knowledge about the universe and by keeping scientific progress close to our hearts and in our imagination. However, these wonderful things that he did are tainted by his recent actions as a politician and I cannot separate the two, though I wish I could.

I won't take the poster down, though, because at the moment it was taken, he was doing something noble and beautiful, something that I can still strive to emulate and surpass.

For more information here is NASA biography, and in the interest of fairness, his biography on desmog blog as well.

Labradorite Meme

2011-11-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the whole meme labradorite meme that started recently made me really excited, not really because I'm the world's greatest fan of labradorite (I like it but there is a lot of minerals that are just as amazing), but because there was a sample of feldspar in my Mineralogy lab quiz and it showed labradorescence!

And here it is!

New Mexico Geology: Rio Grande Rift

2011-11-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

I still vividly remember learning the words to the Beach Boys’ Surfin USA when I was five years old. I was due to graduate from my preschool and we were going to sing that song for our families at the graduation ceremony. For those of you who don’t know, the songs begin with the quintessential Californian Boys lamenting the lot in life for the rest of their countrymen. Specifically they bemoan that:

If everybody had an ocean
Across the U. S. A.
Then everybody'd be surfin'
Like Californi-a
You'd seem 'em wearing their baggies
Huarachi sandals too
A bushy bushy blonde hairdo
Surfin' U. S. A.

While learning this song I remember trying to imagine a United States cut in half by a body of water large enough to generate waves like the ocean. I imagined cowboys surfing from Texas up to Kansas herding cattle who were chilling on rafts, or businessmen windsurfing through city streets to their office buildings (I had a really overactive imagination as a kid). I didn't think an ocean in the middle of the continent would be such a great idea, but I thought it would be interesting none the less. On a side note, when we went over the Vietnam War in high school, guerrilla warfare was described as like your whole country being an ocean, and all your people floating in it which always made me think of this song. Yeah, I know I'm weird.
However, what I didn’t know was that the interior of America did share some features with the ocean (the Atlantic though not the Pacific) and even more surprising, that this feature cut my home state in half. What could dry, land-locked New Mexico have with the Atlantic Ocean? It would seem that no two regions could be less alike. But somehow they are, but for that to be obvious, first we need to understand a very fundamental aspect of our Earth's surface.

Change in Location of continental Plates from the Permian to the present, Photo Credit Geology.com

While the ground beneath our feet may feel solid and static, we know that it is not. Instead the surface is made up of tectonic plates which floats on the flowing plastic of the Upper Mantle. The plates can be divided into two groups, oceanic and continental plates; the continental plates are mostly composed of granite with a thin veneer of sediments coating it and the oceanic crust is composed mainly of basalt. Since granite is composed of lighter (in color and density) than the iron rich basalt, it stands to reason that the continental plates would float above the basalt. Now look at the changes our world has undergone, specifically look at how the continents were torn apart, forming the east and west hemispheres. This formed a divergent plate boundary, and you can almost make out the change in this picture from the initial valley (in the Triassic) that the rift formed to the ocean we see now.
Plates can interact in three primary ways. If two plates strike together head on, this is called a converging plate boundary, and in this instance three different outcomes are possible. If a light continental plate and heavy oceanic plate converge, then the oceanic plate will subduct, or sink, beneath the continent. In this instance a lot of oceanic water end up mixing with the magma, this creates some seriously violent volcanoes, like Mount St. Helens. If two light continental plates crash together, they push each other up like a rug bunching up when you slip on it; this creates massive mountain ranges a great example being the Himalayas. Two heavy oceanic plates can meet, here both plates get pushed down, partially melt and form a volcanic arc. Plates can also slide past each other, like in California at San Andres Fault, and if those movement is interrupted then the plates will lurch forward in a jerking motion causing an Earthquake.

Photo Credit: cotf.edu

However, none of those are what makes the Atlantic Ocean similar to New Mexico. Instead we have to discuss the third type of plate interaction, divergent plate boundaries which are places where plates pull away from each other . Like we saw in the break-up of Pangaea, this small crack in the plates can grow into a huge rift valley and eventually into an ocean! Luckily we have the opportunity to see a Rift Valley in the process of growing farther a part; we see in the aptly named East African Rift Valley the convergence of a few rifts cutting up the eastern coast of Africa. While the mechanism which cause this phenomena are not well known, the popular model among Earth Scientists involves elevated heat flow from the mantles causing bulges under the plates, forcing those plates apart.

Photo Credit: Geology.com

In New Mexico we have our own example of this process, a massive structure that cuts the state in two and formed mountains and volcanoes at its sides making it one of the two features that dominate the geology of the state (the other being the Jemez Lineament). It began about 35 million years ago and then entered a phase of major volcanism for around 15 million years, and the first phase of crustal extension occurred about 5 million years after the start of the volcanism and lasted for ten million years. The rift then took it easy for a few million years, until the northern and southern portions of the rift underwent a period of expansion in the last 10-12 million years.

Photo Credit: Originally produced by the USGS

The rift formed numerous interesting features, but I like the Sandia's the best, so that is a great place to start. Why do I like the Sandia Mountains the best? It might be because they translate to the Watermelon Mountains, it might be because my fiance is from Eastern flank of those mountains, or it might be because it was the first stop on my structural geology field trip. Whatever the reason, they are really cool. Here the crustal extension resulted in horst and graben mountains; the grabens were mostly filled in with sediments eroded off of the Sandias.

Photo Credit: academic.emporia.edu

The Sandia's culminate at the crest, which is a beautiful sight and I could not more highly recommend that anyone visiting Albuquerque drive up to the top and look out over the city.

From my Structural Geology field trip

In addition to being beautiful the Sandia's also hold some amazing geologic features. First and for most is the amazing unconformity which represents a 1.2 billion year gap in the geologic feature. I have to give you my sincerest apologies for not taking pictures of it on my trip, but I'll try to get some the next time I'm in the area. However, just imagine the ancient granite crumbling into a pile of grus at its base tilted slightly with sandstone and limestone laying on top of it. The bottom of the sedimentary layers have been exposed in some places by crumbling granite, and you can walk under the rock and pull out fossils buried above your head! The Sandias also contain hydrothermal vents perforating the area which have resulted in mineral deposits (including some gold).
On the western edge of the Rift are the Three Sisters, who are now kind of old and cold but they used to be HOT...get it because they are dormant volcanoes, I'm hilarious...In all seriousness these three volcanoes are not that large, but they are awesome. These were also caused by the tectonic forces which shaped the valley, and sit on top of a 5 mile long fissure. They are dormant now, but they once spewed out basaltic lava over the area - side note you can actually see the path and level of the rain water over these volcanoes, the calcium minerals in the lava have been weathered in some parts into calcite, so that you have rocks which are black on top and white on bottom.
It would be easy to write a book just about the Sandia's, but the rift gave us more than just this, including the Organ Mountains near Las Cruces which is made up of granite, rhyolite, some sedimentary rocks and even some welded volcanics. The rift dominated much of New Mexican geology and most the North-South trending features in New Mexico were caused by the Rift (East-West trending features are a result of the Jemez Lineament. Including the very river that named the rift.
You see the Rio Grande is a fairly unique river, in that it formed within the valley, instead of forming the valley it now resides in. When the rift was opening up it created several lakes which then began to start linking up, eventually they started to flow south, and provide part of our border with Mexico. These massive forces are at their most striking at the Rio Grande Gorge which drives home more than any other site the awesome power that was tearing apart the crust millions of years ago.

Photo Credit: NM BLM

I should really go into more depth about these features; however, when I first said I would talk about this feature I forgot about how freaking huge it was and just how much the rift affects the geology of the entire state, so when I take some trips out to the areas I'll write them up, but until then why don't we just try to imagine what if the rift had expanded farther until there was an ocean across the U.S.A, do you think everybody would be surfin' like Californi-a?

New Mexico Geology Primer

2011-11-08T16:37:00.000-08:00

I haven’t talked about geology as much as I want to on this blog, so I have decided to change that, this was inspired by Anne at Highly Allochthonous, and in an effort to ease in (and because I won’t start anything resembling research until next semester) I’ve decided to write about a few important geological sights in my home state. Why? Because I love it here, and because it has fascinating and varied features which you could spend a lifetime exploring. In addition, I can pepper the stories with anecdotes about the great and sometimes very strange people and events associated with those sites. You see, New Mexico is very odd from our diet (depending on who you talk to it ranges from strange to a dire sin for any restaurant not to provide green chile as a topping) to music (go to a large dance or party the music will shift between dance music, country, and tejano) to the landforms (I’ll talk about that later) and it makes for an interesting place to live.

Why is New Mexico so odd? It might be because New Mexico has the oldest, continuously inhabited settlement within the United States or the oldest center of government in the country or maybe it is because our history includes a tremendously successful Native American revolt which forced the Europeans out of the state and when they finally returned they had to play nice. Or it might be because of our more recent history of government research or the dichotomy of having the highest rate of PhDs per capita of any state in the union (at least according to History Channel’s series The States) and having the tenth highest rate of high school dropouts in the country. However I always assumed it was due to the diversity and uniqueness of the ecosystems surrounding us. In New Mexico you can take a four hour drive starting in the High planes and drive through deserts, mountains, and wetlands. It was a fascinating place to grow up in, and luckily for me my parents took every opportunity to teach me new and wondrous things about the history and nature surrounding me.

However, eventually I grew older and wiser and learned a very important thing about New Mexico, all that diversity of nature I grew up being fascinated by wasn’t due to the biology which was just a symptom of a much more interesting aspect to the state, instead I learned better and learned that New Mexico is amazing due to its geology. So I am going to call my shots for future posts and provide some background info for the places I plan to write about as well.

High Planes:

First off is the Southern High Plains, which isn’t my favorite part of the state, as it is flat and flat and oh did I mention flat? But it is the specific place in New Mexico where I was born and raised, so it deserves some attention. The Southern High Plains are flat because they used to be crossed from west to east by meandering streams which lazily spread across the planes through Texas into the Gulf of Mexico, however their waters were pirated away by the faster Pecos River—on a side note you know it is going to be an awesome class when your professor starts talking about pirating water.

The High Plains now don’t have too much water, besides on the far western edge where that dastardly Pecos River still resides smugly taunting those he left destitute of water, and are mostly reliant on aquifers for the stuff (okay so even the parts of New Mexico with lakes and rivers rely on aquifers, the state’s drier then straight gin in a martini glass). I grew up drinking well water pulled up from the Ogallala Aquifer (at least for twelve years there was an interlude which we will talk about later); however, for a long time the discharge rates of the aquifer has far outstripped the recharge rate and the residents of the High Plane who think about such things fear very probable water shortages in the region’s future.

Sierra Blanca:

Luckily, I did not spend my entire childhood out where short grass prairie and desert mix and intermingle, but instead I spend most of my elementary school years on a VOLCANO! Okay, well a very dead volcano, but a volcano all the same. Unfortunately for me, though, I did not know this while I grew up there and I didn’t completely appreciate it until after I had been gone for far too long. However, it was here that I first read a book on plate tectonics and the whole reason I stumbled into geology was that I was trying to understand how I was living on a mountain in the middle of the continental crust far away from any plate boundaries. Also this was where we went on my first college geology field trip, so happy memories!

White Sands:

The first time I ever visited this site was during a field trip in Elementary school, and it was amazing; huge white dunes stretch across as far as the eye can see, and I could remember my child brain trying to reconcile the heat with the fact it looked like it had just snowed which wasn’t helped out by us trying to sled down the dunes—if you ever want an extremely effective illustration on static friction first go to Ruidoso in the winter and sled down a hill, then drive down to White Sands and try it there(actually do it the other way around unless you want to end your day on a downer).

Rio Grande Rift

There is a lot I could say about this area, but to understand why this area is so cool all you need to do is imagine me excitedly screaming “THE CRUST TRIED TO PULL ITSELF APART HERE!” and you get the gist.

Carlsbad Caverns:

When I was a child I loved bats, I don’t exactly remember why but I know the obsession I had about Chiroptera (which I actually memorized as a third grader) was greatly aided by the Caverns. If you have never seen a bat flight, I cannot highly recommend it enough. However, I recommend exploring a highly decorative cave like Carlsbad even more, the speleothems are amazing, and if you are healthy and wealthy enough you should walk in from the natural entrance and then take a guided tour to get a better appreciation for the beauty and grandeur of these caves. I still remember very vividly my second grade field trip down into the caverns and I’m pretty sure it had a huge effect on me growing up.

So there you go, five posts that I want to get out as soon as possible, and as I have several of them in some level of completion. I’m going to try to finish one every week to week and half from time that this post is published.

Living in a State of Scientific Wonderment

2011-11-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

I have noticed a disturbing trend with a lot of people, mostly that when I tell them I am a science major they give me a dumbfounded look and ask “What’s wrong with you?” or “Why would you put yourself through that?” and you know in all honesty screw them. I’m tired of playing nice about this; I’m tired of people greedily lapping up the results of science, while insulting those who participate in it. I’m tired of people who are too lazy or have let themselves be brainwashed into thinking science isn’t ‘cool’ disparage my career choice. If I’m having trouble in my class and say something about it or stay in to study instead of going to college night somebody always tells me “Well pick an easier major”.

I didn’t chose my major so I can shill BS in class and pass, or because it would give me more time to party, and every person I’ve talked to who says they picked their major for those reasons have said that they either regret it or life hasn’t been as much fun since they left college. The traditional college experience lasts only four or five years and humans are living longer than ever, so instead of picking a career where you would live for the weekend so that those five years are easy and filled with booze, why not choose something you love and do that for the rest of your life.

That is what I chose to do; I love my classes—every semester I look forward to learning new ideas and developing new tools for my future career. Is it going to be hard? Hell yes, I have no delusions about that, and yes I am nervous about the next few steps, but I also am anxious. I like learning, and am tired of college students who write it off as just something they have to trudge through on their way to their next kegger.

Science lets you live your life with the wonderment and amazement of a child, science not only encourages you but rewards you for asking “why?” I am not a morning person, so I get my day started with coffee, and some mornings when I’m pouring my coffee, it will come out of the spout and seemingly defy gravity as it rushes down the side of the pot only to spill onto the counter where the pot ends. Most people are just annoyed at this momentary delay in their daily schedule. I, however, am not, instead I think about the physical properties of water, how it is a polar molecule with a slight charge at the ends like a magnet. I think about cohesion and adhesion, and sometimes if I am tired enough to let my mind wander far enough, I’ll think about how water aids in chemical reactions and by doing so allowed life to arise on this planet and how on some far off distant planet the same processes may be happening on some new life form is growing up in the water. So I’ll stand there transfixed by the beauty of the universe which was just displayed for me in that tiny little inconvenience that most would either shrug off as inconsequential or bemoan as a horrible waste of their time.

That is the great thing about science. If you know enough, the universe is constantly presenting its wonders to you in some form or another. For example, look at the wall in front of you; do you see its color? That is because outer shell electrons are being excited by the light striking them, jumping up in energy levels and then dropping back to their more comfortable position and as they do, they emit tiny massless packets of energy called a photon, which also acts as a wave, which then travels at the speed of light to your eye so you can perceive its color. Go walk across a grassy field, you are stomping on your cousins just removed by over a billion years of evolution. Look up at night, see those stars? Those are balls of gas under so much pressure due to the force of gravity caused by their huge masses that they are causing nuclear fusion to occur at their cores. Every little speck of light is a hydrogen bomb factory produces massive explosions which pump out the heavier elements of our universe. Oh and by the way, a lot of those stars have planets orbiting them, and some of those planets might even have life.

So, if you are not a scientist, a science major, or science enthusiast, and someone tells you they are don’t ask “What is wrong with you?” but instead ask “Why?” Ask what makes them so passionate that they would dedicate a large portion of their fleeting existence to the process of science and trust me they will tell you. They will explain to you why they do what they do with the wide eyed innocence of a child and with all the enthusiasm of one as well. Because in the end, that is the reason I study science. I like to live in a state of wonderment that can only come as a result of delving past the surface on the mundane world into the why’s and how’s of its inner workings.

Physics with Phineas and Ferb

2011-10-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

The post below is very different from its original form which was a fun exercise with gravity; however, midway through I realized it would be useful tool to teach some physics concepts to some students I tutor. Hopefully I didn't do an injustice to the ideas presented, but also it is hopefully easy to understand by an audience without a great deal of scientific understanding.

I have a confession to make, I love kid shows, mostly the stuff from my time in Elementary School, like Doug, Hey Arnold, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Magic School Bus and I still watch those shows when the opportunity presents itself; however, recently I have developed an unhealthy obsession with the Disney cartoon Phineas and Ferb. There are several reasons for this, but mostly it is because it is a smart, well-written show that doesn’t take itself too seriously and feels free to be really geeky.

Another thing I enjoy about the show is that they try to get science right (when it is brought up) sure they violate the laws of physics all the time but it is a cartoon about tweens building rockets and rollercoasters. However, when they show physics formulas they use the correct ones, not just complicated science babble (except when using a formula for a visual gag).

However, in one episode they demonstrate a common misconception between weight and mass, which I think is very common among people raised in the US (I single out my country because the Imperial System is stupid). In the scene the kids are floating through town in a helium-filled bouncy house when they pass over their destination. So the largest kid, Buford, jumps out of their floating vehicle and grabs onto a rope to allow the kids to sink to the ground. At this point another child points out that he doesn’t weigh any more at the lower height than when he was higher, and the two boy geniuses do not correct him. Well I thought I would, as there is a fundamental difference between mass and weight, in that mass is the amount of “stuff” in an object (usually measured in grams) and weight is the force due to gravity on an object thus it is a measurement of the interaction between the mass of an object and gravity (measured in pounds or Newtons). So what’s the deal his weight shouldn’t have changed just due to a difference in altitude right? Actually yes, yes it would have, you see the effect of gravity lessens the farther from the center of mass (center of the Earth) one is from it. So Buford’s weight would have changed when he lowered his elevation, as he would have experienced a greater force due to gravity.

How much you ask? Well currently I don’t know, but I do know that there is a physics formula for that:

Where G is the gravitational constant (6.674*10^-11 m³/(kg*s²))

Newton figured it out and he was one smart cookie, so we will go with it.

The little m is the mass of Buford, which according to my fiancé (an Elementary Education major) would be about 50kg
The big M is the mass of the Earth (5.974*10^24 kg)

They used a really big scale to measure it

And the r is the radius or distance from the center of the Earth (6.371*10^6 meters plus the elevation of the objects (or children) in question

They used a really big tape measure

Also the F stands for force, as in the force exerted on the objects by gravity, but we can also consider this weight

So first let’s talk about assumptions first off we are assuming that the Earth is a perfect sphere (not true) so that we won’t have to change the value for the radius as the jump house floats through the air, secondly we will assume that there is no change in mass for either object during this time period. So what happens?

Well first we need to figure out how high the jump house is above the ground and then how far below the jump house Buford is when he is hanging by the rope. So since this is a cartoon I’m going to make educated guesses rather than attempt to use some type of computer software to analyze the scene and get some hard numbers. I’m doing this for two reasons first I don’t have experience with that kind of software, and second it’s a cartoon and I’m just trying to make a point.

So let’s look at this video, the scene in question starts about at the 6:20 point and it looks as if the floating jump house is about 30 meters above the ground, and the rope Buford hangs off of is about 8 meters long, so we now have all the info we need.

Video url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIneRclgW8I

F₁ is the original height in the jump house, and F₂ will be Buford’s second lower height.

F₁=(GmM)/r^2

F₁=[(6.674*10^-11 m³/(kg*s²)) (50kg) (5.974*10^24 kg)]/(6.371*10^6m + 30m) ^2

F₁=(1.99*10^16kg m³/ s²)/ (6.371*10^6 + 30m) ^2

F₁=491.1364025 kg*m/s² aka Newtons

Converts to 110.41 lbs

F₂=(GmM)/r^2

F₂= [(6.674*10^-11 m³/(kg*s²)) (50kg) (5.974*10^24 kg)]/(6.371*10^6m + (30-8)m) ^2

F₂=(1.99*10^16kg m³/ s²)/ (6.371*10^6 + 22m) ^2

F₂=491.1364025 kg*m/s² aka Newtons

Also converts to 110.41 lbs

So for all practical purposes there is no change in weight, however if my calculator could show more decimal points you would be able to see a difference eventually. If you don’t believe me we can check Buford’s weight at vastly different elevations, to see if this changes at all.

Radius in Earth radii	Weight in Newtons
R*1	491.141
R*1.25	314.330
R*1.5	218.285
R*1.75	160.373
R*2.0	122.785
R*2.25	97.016
R*2.5	78.583

Remember, all we changed was the distance from the center we moved Buford; we didn’t change the mass of any of the objects. The cool thing is that the first row shows that Buford is about 5 thousandths of a newton lighter 30 feet in the air than he is on the ground (or a 0.001 pound difference).

Now In Graph Form! (I labeled my axis when I made this, but they disappeared!)

As you can see there is a downward trend as you move Buford farther from the surface of the Earth (note do not try to extrapolate to the left to R*0 as there the formula is undefined and also if you go below the Earth’s surface you have to start subtracting mass from your value of big M so the force of gravity becomes weaker—however if you had an Earth mass black hole you could find the force of gravity approaching zero *hint* that number would be really big! As in 49114.103 Newtons (11041.290 pounds) at R*.1)

So while they were right for all intensive purposes in the episode, two boys able to build an interstellar space ship should have known better.

Geology Analogies

2011-10-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

I tutor science for my school, and recently was able to add geology to my list of classes I tutor, which is amazing because now I get to be paid for talking about geology. So today I had my first client, and while explaining some concepts, I came up with two analogies. I thought they were pretty fun and useful, and the student lit up after I had finished as they had just grasped the subject; however, I was wondering if I could improve these analogies, or if I had overlooked anything. Please keep in mind, though, that this is an intro class aimed at non science majors

1. Bowen's reaction series:

I forgot where I found this, but if you know please tell me and I will add proper credit.

This mostly deals with the continuous reaction series; I was attempting to explain why the heavier elements form minerals at higher temperatures. To do this, I linked minerals in a melt to children on a playground, and the heat is analogous to massive amounts of sugar fed to them. As they run around the playground, the bigger kids will collapse first and the lightest most energetic kids will be the last to collapse, with collapsing being analogous to coming out of solution.

2. Crystal Formation in Phaneritic and Aphaneritic rocks
In this analogy there are two sets of kids with a lot of Lego blocks in two separate rooms. The Lego blocks are analogous to the molecules in the melt, and the shapes they are built into are the crystal shapes of the minerals. The group in the first room isn't given much time and each kids quickly puts together very small geometric shapes. This is analogous to Aphaneritic rocks cooling on the surface. In the other room, the kids are given a lot of time to build their shapes, and instead combine the shapes each kid makes into much larger shapes. This is analogous to Phaneritic rocks.

So do these analogies make sense to you? Can they be improved? And if so, how?

Tour of the Lunar Lab

2011-09-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

I don’t really remember when, but at some point last year I realized how different the geology of Mars, Venus, and the Moon are from our home planet, not just their lack of plate tectonics, but also the strange features and processes that seem to exist, separate from our own experiences. At the same time, I was researching graduate schools and trying to figure out what I would want to study when I got there. Lucky for me, somehow those three factors converged and I learned that it was possible to major in Planetary Science, so I changed my plans for the future, and decided to study the planets. Now I don’t know exactly what I will study, but there are enough unanswered questions to go around, so I’m not really worried, I just want to learn one of those questions.

With a new goal for the six plus years once I graduate, I started looking for opportunities to participate in real research, and while on a whim I started looking at possible NASA internships. While I do have faith in my own abilities, that faith does not extend to my resume because it was not that impressive when I started applying to different programs. I have never had any experience working in a scientific field and I go to a very small school that is not known for its STEM fields; however, I applied anyways, but I honestly didn’t expect to hear back from them. They did call back, first for an interview, and then I was emailed about a great opportunity during the summer. I worked with Crew Earth Observations, building a database of astronaut photography of volcanoes. So I spent this last summer in Houston, working a dream job.

Let me first say, if you are a STEM major and you do not have any opportunities on the table for next summer, look up NASA SOLAR and apply for something. NASA has set up a one stop shopping initiative for interns, thus you can fill out one application and apply for as many opportunities as you possibly can. It was a wonderful experience, and the Education office there does an amazing job to provide lectures and learning experiences beyond just what you worked on. However, by far my favorite opportunity was a suited up tour of the Lunar Sample Lab.

I had the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of the tools and processes used to examine and study extraterrestrial materials, and I was amazed by the thorough processes utilized to prevent contamination. First, we gave up our cameras so they could be sterilized, and then we went into the first room which we had to put booties on before we came in. Then we went through a series of rooms each time upping the amount of protection we had before we finally reached the lab. Each room is pressurized slightly more than the one before it, so any contaminants floating in the air would be blown out of the room when the door was opened. Once inside the Lab, everything was inside containment boxes, so a pair of thick rubber gloves provided even more protection to the samples. The most striking thing to me was the intense protection given to every sample. They are hermetically sealed to prevent contamination during storage, and the samples are not opened until they are safely sealed in one of the containment boxes, and only then could scientists examine them. In addition, every bit of every rock has to be kept track of, and unless the researcher has express permission to perform a destructive test, the weight of the sample at the beginning must match the weight of the sample at the end. The people who run the lab and gave us our tour were both highly professional and very friendly; at one point we had a conversion about mineralogy of the rocks and the processes that formed them. In addition, they explained that the unique processes on the surface of the moon (such as micro-meteorite impacts) cannot be duplicated in laboratories which led into a joke about the moon hoax people. If I could get an internship in that lab next summer I would jump on the opportunity in a heartbeat; it was an amazing opportunity.

And now pictures to prove I was there! (Really I was, I didn’t Photoshop any of them)

Hands on experience with a containment box

Tools inside the containment box

This is from memory, but I believe this is the Genesis Rock

Observing the Genesis Rock under a microscope

Basalt from the Moon

Close up on another sample of basalt

More Lunar basalt

The black cube in the bottom right corner is used to show the original orientation of the sample on the Moon!

Three Pieces of Lunar Basalt

This is a station used to cut the samples

If you can't tell, this tour made me excited

Well I didn't use Photoshop, so technically I told the truth

Accretionary Wedge 38: Things I Wished I Learned and Things I Want to Learn

2011-09-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

I haven’t blogged much, mostly because I’m about as scattered brained as you could get (I was going to say I haven’t done much, but then I remembered touring the Lunar Sample Lab, the Trinity Site, and several interesting hikes which I should have written about, well I will get to that soon-ish) however, when I read about this topic, I figured I had a few things to say, so I would try to write some.

First off, I wish somebody would have told me in High School that you could study Geology in college and what you could do with that education. I honestly didn’t even know that Geologists did actual science. I thought they were more technicians in mines or the oil fields; I grew up in the Permian Basin with a working pump jack in my school’s courtyard and two oil refineries on the outside of town, so that was all the experience I had with it. I had been interested in Earth Science since I read a book on Plate Tectonics in the first grade, but nobody told me you could make a living off of it. This actually brings me to a related issue, that I wish a professor at New Mexico Tech would have told me the definition of petrology (or I would have just asked him to clarify) since my only understanding of the prefix petro- came from petroleum I assumed the worst. And because my stated goal in going to college was first and foremost to get away from the oil fields, I thought that Geology wasn’t the field for me and went into college without a clear path towards a degree.

Ironically, once I talked to one of the Geology professors I found out how much I could do with a geology degree, I promptly switched my major after an aimless two year period where I floated through the basics for every science and even wetted my feet in social studies (which ended fairly unpleasantly). While most of my classes applied to my Geology degree since you have to know a lot of everything to effectively understand geology, I still wasted a lot of time on classes that didn’t interest me just so I could realize that they didn’t interest me.

Besides learning some technical skills, which are difficult to attain at a small university, I would like the opportunity to take a class with a holistic look at the geosciences. It would be nice once you learn about Mineralogy, Petrology, Geochemistry, Sedimentology, Structural Geology, etc. to put all that knowledge together and see how they interact with one another in real life. I know that it would be nearly impossible to cover all of geology so in depth in one class, but maybe just looking at one local phenomena and looking at how the different geoscience disciplines interact with each other in that instance. For example, in New Mexico we could study the Rio Grande Rift and see how the structures formed by it where influenced by different properties of the rocks and minerals affected. It was enjoyable in introductory Geology to look at the big picture; however, I think it would be useful to step back at the end of your undergraduate degree and look at the big picture again, in the light of all you have just learned.

Bad Lab Procedures and Bad Science

2011-09-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

The above picture is used by my university (the one which decreed that there shall be no new geology majors) as one of the banner pictures for its website. Basically, this is a picture which is supposed to make prospective students want to come to our school. Well I have a problem with this. First off it has been a while since I took chemistry, but I can’t think of a chem lab where we used a solution that looks like this. I might be wrong; it might be a copper solution of some kind. However, I think this is the Chem lab for non-majors and that is water with blue food dye or this was a faked, thus staged picture.

Now I could be wrong, however there is something else missing from this picture which leads me to believe that it is not a representative of someone practicing real science. I blocked some of the face to hide this person’s identity (I don’t know who this is and I didn’t ask for permission so I’m covering my bases), however I believe you can tell what is missing here-SAFETY GLASSES! This person is totally exposed if something goes wrong with this reaction. Thus either this is a fake or this person (and whoever is watching the lab) has no clue what they are doing.

In the interest of being thorough, I will discuss both situations. If this picture is a fake, this makes the school photographer ignorant and lazy. There is no other way to put it, there are several labs a week happening, each doing very interesting things; instead, based off of this assumption the photographer decided to take a “science-y” looking picture and call it good. Why not go into an upper level chemistry (or geology) lab and take a picture of the students using the advanced (and really cool looking) equipment while wearing proper safety gear? It would have looked better and the picture wouldn’t scream BS to everybody who saw it and knew what actually happens in a science lab (including most High School students, the people this picture is trying to appeal to).

However, what if this is actually a class and that is water with blue food dye in it? I’m ruling out the chemistry classes for science majors. We always had to wear safety goggles and the Professors and TA’s were very insistent about that (as they should be). That means this is a Chem 113 lab designed for non-science majors, and college students are performing a lab best reserved for Junior High students at the oldest! I have a feeling that this might be the case, as I have talked to some professors and they have said they feel the need to dumb down the courses to make sure that the art and communication students understand it (the professors didn’t single out those majors I did). The problem is the students in those classes don’t understand science, they just pass easier classes. Now here in lies my problem with the system. All majors take the same introductory English classes including English majors. The same is true with introductory history and history majors, political science and poly sci majors. If you took Intro to business as an elective, you would take that class with actual business majors. In no other subject at this university are you told that you don’t need to know the basics that is required of the majors. In effect you are saying that these classes are too hard for the average student. I call BS on that. It is ridiculous that we think science is ‘too hard’ for most students; science is the building blocks of our society. Everything we do and everything we interact with relies on the body of knowledge and techniques that have been in development since Galileo. And the ignorance of these students is shown. This is a very conservative area, thus this university has a tremendous amount of Climate Change-deniers and creationists. However, conservative doesn’t mean stupid and ignorant, one of my good friends is pretty conservative and is a biomathmatical researcher (as an undergrad, the boy is smart), but science is never really explained to these students so they have no reason to trust it, so they live in a magical world where they can turn on the lights but have no idea how they turn on.

I am aware that some, if not most, students come to this school unprepared to take these ‘tougher’ science classes; however that should not stop them from getting to them eventually. When a student comes to college, if they are in need of immediate English, Reading, or Math, they take remedial classes, classes for no credit, but they are required for that student in order for them to advance to actual college level classes. Why not have remediate science classes in the same vein as those other subjects? Students shown in need of basic science education could be placed in the classes where they could learn about the scientific method, atomic theory, cellular theory, basic Newtonian mechanics (sans most of the math just the concepts), evolution, and in general be brought up to the national standards expected of High School graduates.

The point of a traditional liberal education is to become familiar with a wide array of subjects. I have credits for everything from Introduction to Literature to Comparative Government to US and World History and those classes would be the same as was required for the majors. However, if you live in a First World country and you do not understand science, you do not understand the world you live in. It is absurd to use a smart phone without understanding radio waves or how computers work, or to use an antibiotic other than Penicillin without understanding evolution. College is the last opportunity most of these students will have to understand science and if they leave ignorant, we know that ignorance will be twisted into a rope that someone will lead them around by. Be it a politician, cult leader, new age guru, or unscrupulous business owner, if you do not know how the world works someone will use it against you.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan

However, I would like to say there is a good banner photo of science on the school site:

Well, you can’t tell what the students are doing, but that skull makes the picture looks awesome!

Five Reasons Geology Rocks

2011-07-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

Today was a very frustrating day, I’m working with computer programs I am not familiar with at all and trying to do more with them then I feel capable of, in addition to that, my internship is up at the end of next week so I’m feeling the crunch to finish the last bit of my project. So in order to remind myself why I usually like to work in geology I decided to write myself a list of reasons why I love the earth sciences (this also has the additional benefit that it would give me answers when I am asked “Why do you study Geology?” besides my usual answer of “I like rocks!”)

1. Every rock tells a story (you just have to figure out what it is):

· If you have studied geology at all, you understand this and are probably fascinated by even the simplest stories rocks can tell: from coral reefs becoming beds of limestone, to lava flowing across the surface cooling into basalt, to the massive heat and pressure beneath the surface of the Earth which produces gneiss. All of these stories are fascinating; however, with more study the stories become even more interesting and subtle

· For example, my girlfriend and I were hiking in around the three extinct volcanoes near Albuquerque, and at the first peak we went to I noticed an obvious path for water to flow down and as I looked down the path I noticed that the rocks in the path were not all black like most of their brethren, instead their bottom quarters to halves were white. The rocks in the pathway of the water were being chemically weathered but only as far up as the water ran during the periodic flash floods. I wish I still had pictures from that day, but I’m not sure what happened to them, so I guess I’ll have to go back another time.

2. It is everywhere!

· Okay look down, well you are probably inside so imagine the ground under you, guess what that’s geology. Everywhere you go there is geology, even in boring flat places (like most of the places I’ve lived) have had some really interesting geologic events at some point, and if you read up on them before you drive through it, it will give you something to think about instead of slowing going insane due to boredom.

· In addition, nothing spices up a road trip like cursory identification of rock strata as you cruise through road cuts at 75 mph, especially if you are the driver (caution this will cause you to swerve into oncoming traffic). This is why I love the roadside geology book series, it really doesn’t get much better than driving across country and getting to see new geology as you do (and learning why it is there)

3. Thinking in geologic time

· I have a love hate relationship with this one while I think the concept is great and awe inspiring, but also it is hard to appreciate the time span of anything humans have ever done, empires last for hundreds of years while a geologic age is measured in millions of years, kind of screws up your appreciation for history. However, the idea of incredibly long processes slowing shaping and reshaping the landscape is a beautiful (and true) idea, some days I like to sit and look at different formations and think about the massive time it took for it to form (unless it is a volcanic formation usually those things didn’t take too long to form).

· Near Carlsbad, NM there is a part of Lincoln National Forest called Sitting Bull falls which is a spring fed waterfall. The spring comes up on sandstone and then comes into contact with limestone which was laid down during the Paleozoic, it is a beautiful example of differential erosion with the sandstone having barely eroded in that time, and the limestone having being cut away into a large hole around 50-60 feet below the coarser stuff up top.

4. People ask you questions

· I get asked a lot of random questions, from friends, family, and random people when I tell them I am a geology student, everything from “how do ocean waves work” to “what causes volcanoes” and a lot of other things. This is great since I love talking about science because 1. I like to hear the sound of my own voice and 2. Science is awesome and a lot of fun to talk about. Sure sometimes people try to trap you with questions about Global Climate Change and Evolution, but I welcome them, I have facts on my side, you just have crazy.

5. It is like a detective story

· I’ve always like detective stories, however, most thrillers and mysteries are pretty transparent to me now days, I think I just read and watched too many of the stories so I am too used to them now. However, trying to figure out what happened in the geologic history books (rocks and strata) is an intense mental exercise that requires you gather and then use every bit of information available for that area, and it is always incredible rewarding to finally understand how a feature formed and the consequences that holds for the area around it.

So those are my five favorite reasons to study geology, and honestly I think any one of them is a good reason to study it, and honestly I do feel a lot better now, sure some things might be frustrating when you first encounter them; however, the payoff once you overcome it is completely worth the effort in the first place.

New Project

2011-07-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

I feel very fortunate for a variety of reasons, but especially because I was given a great chance to succeed in science where the majority of my peers in Southeast New Mexico had to jump over huge hurdles just to have a chance to understand the subject. My parents are both teachers and they worked diligently to instill in my siblings and myself the importance of education; we went to a zoo, museum, or historical site nearly every vacation. While we were driving we would talk about the history of the area or my dad would quiz our mathematical abilities Nearly everything we did would somehow become a learning experience.

And while I always had a love of learning, my family helped nurture it, turning what might have been a secondary hobby, into my lifelong passion. The best example of this is when I was in fourth or fifth grade my uncle decided that every birthday/Christmas he should give me a book that would be too hard for me to understand right then, but eventually I would be able to. For some reason that I can't remember, the first book he gave me was Darwin's On the Origin of Species which I tried to read right then and got through the introduction before it was too hard. However, this was a huge turning point in my life and I continued to learn as much as I could about science from then on.

Like I said above, this gave me a huge advantage of my peers at school. While I was learning about science and getting a jump start, their pastors, parents, etc were holding them back. Telling them science was wrong, evil, and a ploy to still their freedom or their soul. As a result I have noticed that most of my friends from high school and college are very misinformed about science. I want to try to change this, though, and I have come up with a project to try to change this. My Facebook friends are filled with people who have very little formal science education and their informal knowledge comes from impartial sources with political motivations to discredit everything from evolution to climate change to even the idea of an ancient Earth, so I want to offer to answer any question they might have about any discipline of science. I have a good basic background in science and can look up most answers myself; however, to add some legitimacy to this endeavor, I was hoping for some professional scientists to contribute to some the answers, even if it is only a line or two of logic or giving some evidence.

I want to do this because I believe that a personal touch in science outreach will encourage people to trust the experts instead of viewing them as shadowy authority figures. Hopefully this could help a group of students who have little to no science education learn to appreciate and enjoy the study. And maybe, this could serve as a model for other students from similar areas to spread their knowledge to their friends and family. Who knows maybe other science students in the position I am in could help expand the public's scientific understanding.

On the Road to Las Cruces

2011-02-10T23:03:00.000-08:00

So this weekend we are driving from Portales to Las Cruces, a ridiculously long drive if you have ever had the misfortune of making the trip. It honestly feels as if you have made a rough circle around the entire state because the roads out here kind of suck. Despite the soul crushing boredom of the drive (at least this time I won’t be doing it alone) it does cross nearly all the most interesting geology in Southeastern New Mexico. We will leave the ancient Portales River Valley and cross the current Pecos River Valley, then go over the ancient volcano that is Sierra Blanca (we will miss the best views of the Lincoln folds though), once we leave the weathered mountain we will head towards Alamogordo and White Sands, finally we will drive across the Rio Grande Rift as we pass the Rio Grande River and drive into Las Cruces. Thinking about these structures is the only way I can survive the 5+ hour drives across this state.

I have already planned weekend excursions to all of the previous mentioned locales, and I have kind of worked out what I want to talk about in each of them, and since I’m going to Las Cruces to meet up with family I will only have Sunday to explore the southernmost portion of the Rift Valley—the Organ Mountains. I’m pretty excited about this upcoming weekend, and I can’t wait to check out what features there are. However, there is one feature of the Rift Valley that I want to talk about here, and that is the very river.

What makes the Rio Grande so much more special? Well the rio and its adjacent valley didn’t form normally with the stream starting high in the mountains and cutting its valley; instead the valley was formed by tectonic forces as a rift valley and the Rio Grande was originally a series of lakes in the valley which were eventually connected to form the great (at least by the standards of us in the Southwest where a sufficiently deep puddle might be labeled a lake and celebrated as a wonder of the natural world) river. After it leaves the rift valley, around El Paso, the river becomes a meandering stream which then of course is used to mark the border between Texas and Mexico, no problem there right? I mean nothing is more stable than a meandering river.

I love the amazing geology in New Mexico; it gives you numerous opportunities to see various different earth processes in action from dune formation to volcanics to stream action to cave formation and various other actions. The great thing is that you can plan out a camping trip to see most things you learn in the classroom. It is truly fascinating to get a real world demonstration of classroom ideas. Many of the classes in the geology department take field trips out into our surroundings, but there are only so many hours in a day so our time is limited. I like to supplement theses field trips by taking what I have learned and then to take a weekend to explore the area in greater detail. I highly recommend this to all geology undergrads. Take your free weekends and camp out in the world and see what you are learning about, it is awesome and a great learning experience.

A Vestige of a Beginning

2011-01-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

So it has been a week into my sixth semester of college and third as an official geology major and I am excited for the first time I have two junior level classes-Stratigraphy and Sedimentology as well as Structural Geology; this semester should be fun and interesting. After this week I feel pretty well acquainted with my classes, so I thought I might talk a bit about these classes and geosciences in general.

I haven’t really had a chance to delve into my Structural Geology class, but my Strat/Sed class has been really interesting so far. Mostly we have discussed the foundation for this science; we stared with Steno and then going through the numerous missteps ending with Werner. What was really amazing to me was how these men, who did add quite a bit of knowledge to other geologic fields such as mineralogy, were so off the mark in how the layers of rocks were laid down.

Werner in particular is a fascinating man. His strong arm tactics probably held back geology for several decades, his students were completely indoctrinated into his field of geognosis which completely disregarded field observation and research, and his students were told that Werner knew everything there was to know and not to ask questions. This of course runs against the idea of an open dialogue which is necessary for science to flourish.

To me what was truly amazing was learning about James Hutton and John Playfair; Hutton’s insistence on field research and use of the scientific method revolutionized the field. Hutton is one of those great historical characters who at first failed at everything he tried, but then ended up revolutionizing the world. Hutton bounced around from program to program in academia and eventually all over Europe. Hutton’s extensive education gave him the background to understand the processes at work, and his extensive travels allowed him to see numerous and varied landscapes which in turned allowed him to make connections between widely different lands and helped him understand that the Earth has been shaped by a myriad of processes.

There is a cautionary tale to Hutton’s story, though. Scientists have to be able to communicate their ideas; apparently of the numerous university courses Hutton took, English wasn’t one of them. This prevented his ideas from being communicated to the general public. Just listen to this piece on volcanoes and volcanic mountains: “a volcano should be considered as a spiracle to the subterranean furnace, in order to prevent the unnecessary elevation of land, and fatal effects of earthquakes; and we may rest assured that they, in general, wisely answer the end of their intention, without being in themselves an end, for which nature has exerted such amazing power and excellent contrivance.” The man liked to ramble and was not an enjoyable read; luckily for us and for the field of geology, Hutton had a close friend and traveling companion in John Playfair. Playfair had taken an English class and could write, so he basically translated Hutton’s work into understandable English.

My professor is a strong proponent of teaching the historical foundation of the geosciences (this is my third class with him and he has started off every semester teaching at least some history), and while most of my classmates seemed bored by these lessons, I am fascinated by them and think they provide valuable insight. The failings of Werner and his contemporaries demonstrate the importance of the scientific method. These men assumed their Earth to be as unchanging as it appeared to be; however, had they put their conclusions to the test they would have found it lacking in proof and hopefully would have revised them to be more in keeping with the evidence at hand. These historical lessons teach us not to assume and to stay observant and keep our minds open which is a very important lesson for students just beginning their scientific careers.

So maybe starting off a geosciences blog with a history lesson isn’t the brightest idea ever, but I really wanted to talk about this subject, and my friends and family just look at me like I’m crazy. My next post will be about some geologic feature in Southeastern New Mexico which I should have it up in a week and a half or so.