Oh hey, it's the rock in your pocket. Ali Ward back with Part two of Geology. Have you listen to part one?
Why not?
If you haven't, go back listen to part one. It's linked in the show notes. It covers everything from what the hell is rock? To what's a boulder? Is sand rocks? What's a mineral? How do we read rocks? Why are they different colors? And what is the most low stakes free hobby in the world involving a gravel driveway? Okay, so listen to one and then now let's get to
part two. So this guest is once again beloved by all getting their PhD at Oregon State studying paleoclimate and glacial geology, and this follow up episode will answer questions from hundreds of listeners who left their queries via patreon dot com slash ologies, where you can join for a dollar a month that gives you the heads up on upcoming episodes and it lets you leave questions for theologists. So thank you patrons for supporting the show from day one.
Thank you also to any listener who rates and subscribes and especially leaves reviews.
I read them all.
This week I picked Clifton's to read and they said, Ologies is a magic school bus reboot none of us knew we wanted, but better because it includes real scientists, social scientists, audio memes, and cursing Clifton Thornton.
I'll take it.
Also, if you don't want cursing, you can check out the g rated Smologies episodes, which are linked in the show notes. Okay, Part two Geology, Pull up a petrified stump and get ready for geodes, long hikes, lab grown diamonds.
Fossilized trees, space rocks, lead poisoning ponds, and their favorite ever rock with lifelong lithophile and your new favorite geologist Schmidty Thompson. Have some time for me to keep you a little bit longer?
Yeah? Absolutely, I've got no word to be god? Yeah, can I make it a chief harder?
We should see, and we did. Thank you for being.
So patient of my very uninformed questions.
Oh my gosh, no, no, no, no. It's great.
If someone comes to me like tell me about rocks, like why is that not a great thing? Like that, I get to be the person to tell them. Because that's why I love talking about geology is just because I think it's neat all right.
I thought This was a great question.
Amanda McClendon, Ariel Belch and Roda Vacaria wanted to know is ice a rock?
Ice rock?
That's a good question, and I don't think I have a good definitive answer well now, because if you look at just the very technical definition of what is a mineral, ice fits a lot of those properties.
So, as we covered in Part one, a mineral is a naturally occurring inorganic element or compound that has an orderly internal structure. It has a crystal form and physical properties. So ice kind of checks out.
But the thing that's different about ice is about, you know, what kind of states that exists in relative to other rocks. So for in the most part, you know, when you're thinking about when does the rock become a liquid rock, that happens at very very high temperatures. When rocks are moving through our Earth systems, they're going to be behaving very differently than when ice would be moving through the
same rains of temperatures. If you're a heat up a rock until it became lava magma, ice would just be vapor by that point. So I think it makes sense in some ways. You know, we're looking at the technicality and like, yeah, this fits in all of the same categories. But then in terms of thinking about you know, how does this material interact with in Earth systems? Like how does it behave? How does it influence the nature of our planet? Ice is kind of in its own category, y'all.
There is debate about this and I triple checked, and if it seems to icy, it's because it is.
But here's low down.
So a mineral needs to be composed of solids, and water is not a solid, So no, the ice cubes in your freezer are not minerals or rocks. However, if it is naturally occurring ice like a snowbank that has solidified or a glacier, them's a rock.
A glacier is a rock. How hot does rock have to be to melt or does that really depend on the rock?
It really depends on the rock. And it's actually part of the reasons we're not just surrounded by one rock is that different minerals crystallize different temperatures.
So when you have.
A blob of magma moving up through the Earth's crust, it's going to be cooling, and as it's cooling, some minerals might cool and drop out and sit at the bottom and be left behind. And so that means that that's one way for our Earth system people to sort like, oh, you know, maybe a lot of the minerals that are like deep in the sound of the Earth are going to be really rich in things like iron and magnesium.
But as different kinds of minerals are crystallizing and cooling and being left behind by magma moving, that's the way to concentrate different amounts of elements in different kinds of rocks.
And so that's part of the reason that Earth is the way it is is because we have, you know, all these tectonic plates moving around, and we have this mantle that is moving material around, and as rocks and minerals are moving through igneous and sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, it's kind of acting like it's sorting out different concentrations of elements into different parts of the planet.
So, yes, rocks and water are acting like colanders and sorting heavier elements and minerals, which then link up in crystalline structures, sometimes in the cracks and spaces of other rocks, which is why there might be, for example, a vein of quartz in granite. Now, if there is a lot of silica dissolved in water, quartz rocks like amethyst might form or agis.
And if the water has just a boatload of copper.
In it, years and years down the line, turquoise or malachite might form, And gems and rocks can form sixty feet to twenty five miles deep in the earth, but some, like diamonds and parado.
Are a little bit more shy.
They crystallize as deep as one hundred and twenty five miles below the surface of Earth, one hundred and twenty five miles deep in volcanic tunnels called kimberlite pipes and weird fact, all diamonds are roughly one to three billion years old, all of them.
They're old. They're special.
But historically diamond mining can come with a true human cost, and they've been mined in war zones and some of the money is used to fund more wars. Russia is a huge diamond exporter, and recent sanctions mean fewer diamonds on the market, which means Sillennials and gen z Folks are looking to get hitched using other gems or lab grown diamonds, which are actual structural diamonds totally legit diamonds, but up to seventy three percent cheaper, and they're more
sustainably made. The resale value is less, but so are the ethical bummers. But the lesson here is that the only thing we can really rely on, the only constant, is change. So yes, your life might feel like it's melting under the boiling, hellish pressure of the entire earth, but something new and shinier and stronger is on its way. Just give it a few billion years.
And that allows us to get all of the beautiful variations of rocks that we have. So like, if you're to go to other planets, they're not going to have as many different kinds of rocks as we are because they don't have the tectonic system that allows the different kinds of.
Rocks to develop.
Oh So, like the rocks we have today were very different from the rocks that first formed four point five billion years ago.
Does that mean that there might be completely different rocks that don't exist now in the future.
That's a really good question.
I don't I don't know the answer to that, but I know who I would ask about that, so I might get back to you.
So Schmidty asked a friend who said that the planet will settle at a lower temperature but have the same pressure, which will stabilize the kind of rocks produced so same. But Schmitty's friend wasn't sure if that would produce any minerals we don't already have to be determined by a time machine and a pickax. But what about on other planets? So this next question was asked by patrons Gig Katie King, Will kingen Ron Dagdag, and Gina Woolsey and a bunch
of other people wanted to know. Gina says, space rocks are cool. What are some of the coolest things found via space rocks, either ones that have landed to the Earth or ones that are still in space. And then Stephen Woo wants to know, how do we know if a rock is from space? And Alice rubens chimed in, all rocks are from space. Technically we are also from space. Do you have thoughts on space rocks?
Absolutely, thos on space rocks.
So space rocks are really cool because depending on where it formed, that can tell us a lot about parts of the Solar System that are really hurt to reach. And so you know, a lot of our space rocks are from I'm not expert on meteorites. This is just a very broad overview, but a lot of the space rocks formed when the rest of the planet's rocky plants are forming, so they're just space dust that hasn't been
through the formation of a planet before. But we can also get space rocks from the Moon, from the.
Planet Moon from the planet the Moon.
Star, so you have rocks from the Moon and sometimes land on our planet. We also have rocks from Mars that have made it to the Earth. Love that, so we actually have rocks from Mars that we can study because at some point Mars got hit by a meteor meteorite and some Martian rocks get ejected into space and they landed on Earth.
For more on this, you can listen to the Areology episode about Mars with doctor Jennifer Booze, which not just Martian rocks, but also the time doctor Booze got to handle Moon rocks and it didn't go well and she lost her marbles. Also, the Selenology episode with rock hel Nuno is all about the Moon and we have it as a Smology's episode in case you have small young people who want to learn about the Moon. Smology's episodes are linked in the show notes. They're friendly for all ages.
They're free. Speaking of ages, Schmidi says that Iowa borne geochemist doctor Claire Patterson had a bright idea to figure out how old the planet is? How old is this thing we're living on?
But actually, I think one of the coolest things to come out of studying space rocks is not necessarily about the space rocks, but that's how we first figured out how old a planet was was using space rocks. When we were starting to figure out the age of the Earth, someone had the idea that a lot of these space rocks probably formed at the same time that the Earth did.
And one of the really cool things that you can do if you're doing chemistry on a rock is you can use little tiny bits of radioactive elements inside to rock to how old it is. And so a lot of the rocks will incorporate tiny trace amounts of radioactive elements like uranium into them, and when the rock is still a blot of magma or it's space material, that uranium is decaying and it's producing things like lead, and that's just getting mixed up when a rock hardens it
becomes a rock. That crystal structure is going to trap anything the decaying radioactive uranium produces inside it, and so it's kind of like a timer. And so if you can get a piece of a rock that has litle tiny bits of radioactive uranium in it, and you can look how much uranium is there and how much lead is next to it, you can get an idea of how long it's been since that rock formed and that timer started, and that would be about how old the
Earth is. And so a while back, we were able to get the age of four point five billion years from a meteorite, and that age of the Earth has stood the test of time, like, that's a pretty darn good estimates. When we are trying to figure out how much urine even led there wasn't these meteorites. I think this was in the thirties or the forties.
You had to.
Measure how much lad there was in the sample. And this was back when we still had lead in gasoline.
And so the scientist who was trying to measure the sled was getting weird results, and so he started trying to figure out where is the sled coming from and so he developed a lot of modern green room procedures because lead was in the air, it was in his hair, it was in its glows, and so he went on to be a really active voice against environmental lead because he became so aware of that was in everything, because it was contaminating all his samples.
So get the lead out, that is all.
So yes, doctor Clara Patterson, well done, High fives. So we covered this in the Ludology episode about video games with doctor Jane McGonagall. And why were we chatting about like atari and lead toxicity in the same episode because of something called the lead violence hypothesis. So lead poisoning affects developing brains in ways that can lead to aggression
and impulsivity and impaired executive functions. And what do you know, Lead and gasoline post World War two meant a baby boom that was maturing into individuals more likely to commit violent crimes. And a twenty eighteen Mother Jones article explains, quote, every year the population of teenagers with lead poisoning increased, and violent crime increased with it. This is why the seventies and eighties were eras in which crime skyrocketed quote.
So why is this. Neuroscientists have found that because lead is chemically similar to calcium, it displaces the calcium needed for normal brain development. And the data is just staggering, and bands of leaded gasoline and lead paint correspond to these huge drops in violent crime. Again, well done, doctor Claire Patterson. You also had to work on I'm the atom Bomb too, but thanks for figuring out the lead stuff and that Earth is four point five four three
billion years old, give or take fifty million years. I liked Benjamin's question, Benjamin wants to know geology seems like a big deal. My question is, how do you think chocolate candy rocks look? Did they do a good job?
I should have a funny story about that. I had some really amazing chocolate rocks. They were probably that size, like an egg, painted with these beautiful metallic edible pains,
and I was like, this looks pretty convincing. And it's really hard to identify a rock by picture because a lot of rock id is like picking it up and feeling it and moving it around and looking at the crystals and looking at it under a microscope, licking it delicious, and so it's really hard, Like a lot of people send me pictures of rocks, and I oftentimes can't give them a good answer what it is. But I thought, let's just try this, so I sent a picture of
this chocolate rocks and geology friends. It was like, what do you think this is? And they all gave rock answers, and then I sent the back picture of the rock dropped in half, showing.
It with chocolate. The were all these pos So a lot of chocolate rocks for a pretty.
Good job mischief, good natured fun with just a dash of endearing evil schmidty.
I love it.
Miranda Panda wants to know if you saw the news story about the large boulder the size of a small boulder on the side of the road, and if you had thoughts on that.
I did see that.
I didn't ever read the article about it, but that's really funny to me because I feel like boulder is one of those many funny words that a lot of people in science interact with. It has a technical definition, like there is a size of rock that above which a rock is a boulder, but you know, the boulder is a very common colloquial term, So I would I would love to track down that article and see like exactly who was using the world boulder and should they have known better?
I know, I want, I want to reach out to them and see if they meant a large boulder the size of a small car or what they were thinking if it was just like just a brain fart. But okay, side note, if you are just blissfully off of the Internet, you may have missed when a Colorado Sheriff's office tweeted a photo of a geological road obstruction with the caption large boulder the size of a small is completely blocking eastbound lane Highway one forty five at silver Pick Road.
Please use caution.
This was in January twenty twenty, when pre pandemic Twitter was still sometimes used for things like silliness and chuckling at typos and yes. In a subsequent interview, I went and found this. I dug around the public information officer who drafted that tweet, Susan Lily, admitted that she definitely meant a large boulder the size of a small car, but that large boulder sized small oopsie was just cute
as hell and anyway, language has a real plasticity to it. Oh, speaking of that, Mohammed Farco and also Jules Clement, first time question asker. Jules says, we have the bronze age, the iron age, are we now in the plastic age?
And Mohammad wants to know.
Okay, I've read there's a new type of rock that consists of plastics called plastic i glomerates, and my question is how does that happen and what does it mean in the larger scheme of things? Also, eke, are there plastic rocks chocolate rocks? But are their plastic ones?
There are?
So there is something that we consider plastic rocks. So just like how sand and silt and clay moves through sort of a system, you can get a little bit of plastic that are really really really really resistant to degrading that are going to be moving through our rivers and our oceans and they're gonna glomp together the same way sand does. And so that's going to become part of our geologic record.
How do you feel about it?
I don't feel good about it.
Plastic is if you're thinking geologically about the things humans are going to do that are going to leave an impact on our planet, Plastic is a big one. Because everything in our Earth is constantly cycling and so I think there's a lot of real advantages to using products that will eventually go back into the cycle of materials moving through the earth, and plastic very much is not one of them.
When you're sitting on the beach, you're looking at sand, do you see plastics in there?
I do see plastic, and if if I can reasonably assume that it's not something that was gross, I I try and pick it up. I'm a habitual trash picker. Upper I was up to mpt by pockets before I do laundry.
That happened with me today and I found some garbage in the pocket. Then I forget where I even picked.
It up, but it was in there.
I always have to do that.
Let's all aspire to find trash in our pockets on laundry day, or even better, throw the trash away and wash our disgusting hands as soon as we see a garbage can.
Okay.
Chandler Witherington and Corey Francis Parks want to know first time question. Ask for Corey, where do you even start as an amateur geology fan. Chandler wants to know are there any apps that you recommend to help identify rocks? I mean, I guess unless the app licks the rock, are you just fresh out of luck?
Yeah?
I don't have any good apps to identify rocks. But the two things I recommend would be you can go to a local bookstore sometimes they'll have local rock guides, or you can get like a paper I still have, you know, I have two various field guides to rock and minerals books that I've been carrying around with me for many years. And then there's a website and recommend
if people are really interested in learning about rocks. There's a website called mindat that you can look it up, and it's just this really comprehensive database and you can spend a lot of time there. Along with having all sorts of chemical information about the rock, there's also you can look at pictures of them, and there's oftentimes pictures of both what this rock looks like in sort of everyday situations and then also just these beautiful pictures he's been hours staring at.
So that was mindat dot org.
M I ndat dot org, and I just accidentally went on and looked at citrens for forty five minutes, and then I fell down a hole looking at different types of corundum, which can be rubies and sapphires. Thanks Mindat, I fucked on my deadlines. But rocks are pretty so yeah.
I recommend going to a local bookstore and just seeing what field guides are available there, and then some areas also will have sometimes there'll be a rockhounting groups of rockhounting is a practice where you go and specifically go out and field to collect rocks. Sometimes you'll have a logical society trying to find like a local resource for what kind of rocks are in your area, and they're just going out picking them up and using your field
guide to trying to identify them. Because really the best way to get to know the rocks and figure out how to identify them is just to just practice.
Well, we did have a lot of people who asked about rock collecting and rock hounding, and I'll list their names. Delaney, Lizzy car Jesse, Dragon, Niki de Marco, Ronya Shy Kly, Katherine Griffith, Jodi Pierce, Jesse, b Gen's Girl, Alvarez, Nina, Gia Kabe, Kelly Simon, bex Wood, driff Amina, Abby d Artist, Kristin Rosenblum, Anastasia Doherty, Jenna Congdon and first time question asker Amy Banco and Brianna Armandarz. First time question asker wants to know why do you think humans are fascinated
with rocks? Why when we see a cool rock, are we like I got to announce this. Why do you think people love them so much?
That's a good question.
If I'm speaking from my own heart, it's just because they're so cool, Like, it's really fun to get to just be out in the environment and look down at the ground and see something beautiful. So you know, whether it's like a really smooth ray river pebble that you can like touch and feel, and or it's you know, a sort of more quartzy and more sort of gemstony crystal or a geo that you can find. It's really amazing to just be out in the world wherever you
go and find something beautiful. And I think once you start to learn more about them, it's amazing to be able to just go literally anywhere and pick up a rock and get to know a little bit more about the place they're in.
Well, I'm so glad you mentioned geodes, by the way.
On that note, Paige McLachlan Megan A, Jody Pierce, Chinett, Mass McCurdy, Frederick Raymond Cursel, Harper, Thomas Delaney, Amy cray all had geode questions, and they were not the only ones, because I got to ask Emily Sanchez wants to know what's up with geodes?
Are they rocks? Are they crystals?
Both?
Grace Rubbis Show wants to know. Are the amethyst geos sold at museums even real?
What is a geode?
Yeah, a geode? I don't know.
The technical definition knops off my head, but my best understanding of geodes is you have an empty cavity or some kind of empty space in a rock, and usually water is going to be moving through that and that's going to allow crystals to grow from the outside in, and so.
They are a rock.
One way to maybe go looking for them is if you can understand the layers of like what rocks in general, like what are the rocks in the area. A lot of the times, different layers of rocks can really well documented, and so you can know if you're going into the field, like, oh, the rocks in my environment are going to be this kind of rock they formed at this time, and you
know they have the right conditions performing geodes. But yeahs they're so beautiful, getting all those crystals that are grown in from the outside.
I just love them.
And a lot of the amethyst is a very common form of quarts, so a lot of the times if you see them being sold, there's a good chance that they naturally relate that. But I do know sometimes if you go to, for example, gift shop and you see brightly neon colored gemstones, I'm pretty sure there are processes with which you can dye minerals, so not everything you can go buy in a store is going to be naturally colored.
So yes, remember how a lot of citrine points you see a really heated amethyst, Well, if you never spot a citrine geode in a shop, it's probably an amethyst one with a little help from an oven to turn it yellow, which is still amazing and beautiful. But natural catrins don't usually geode. So geodes are rocks that form with a pocket in them, kind of like a peda. And maybe it was a bubble in volcanic ash. Maybe it was a tree root or a dead prehistoric rat.
Either way, that thing dissolves over time and water gets in in the minerals in that water allow the crystalline rocks to form in the empty peda pocket. Deserts are a good place to find geodes, and so is Iowa, a state at one point known as the geode capital of the world. And this led me down a hole to learn about some solid rocks that have an agate
in the center. And they're called rhyolite spheriolites professionally, but you can also call them thunder eggs, so named by some because Pacific Northwest indigenous tribes considered them to be tossed around by the thunder gods. And it's Oregon state rock, the thunder egg. Florida's is agatized coral, which is like a thunder egg, but it's a little bit more oceanic.
Utah State rock coal, Okay, but Mississippi has an interesting, a good state rock, which was on the minds of patrons Cole Robertson, Emily Kreeger, Rachel Kendrick, and Sonya Bird zero, which we're going to talk about next. But at this point I was just petrified of taking up too much of Schmidy's time. Sorry, we're just throwing so many quests.
I'm nowhere to be I love this.
Okay, Alex Suarez and so many other people want to know what's up with petrified wood?
Is it wood? Is it rock? I need answers.
That's great. I love petrified wood.
So petrified what happens when you have wood in an environment where it's been separated out from things sort of like biological processes that will decay it away. And what happens is as water is moving through wood, for example, has been buried in sediments that were organic, structure is going to be replaced with minerals. And so in the end, when petrified wood, when all that are getting material has been replaced with rock material, then that's become petrified wood.
And so that is a.
Rock, although I'm d I'm a rock.
To my best understanding.
And typically once that process is complete, there's no organic material left, but it's sort of it's the same process by which fossils form, and so all of that original material has been replaced.
With rock and it's preserved the structure. So petrified wood is really cool.
And I think, you know, going back to the question of collecting things, I think when it comes to collecting petrified wood, probably that's something you really want to be careful about, because rocks like petrified what are not the most common ever, and oftentimes they can be a really
important scientific resource. And then there's a national either park round monument that's this whole petrified forest, and that's going to be somewhere where you really want to make sure you're leaving you know, these beautiful rocks like petrified wood behind, so that way future generations can enjoy them.
Can you lick petrified wood? Yeah, the same way you can fossil. Will it stick to your tongue?
I don't believe it will stick to your tongue.
Oh good to know.
But I have a.
Piece of petrifriyed what I could go lick, But I don't think it will.
Stick in my tongue.
Report back, let me know it will at some point. Apparently tongues do not stick to petrified wood. So you heard it here. Let's lick petrified wood, but let's not steal it. Have a respectful look at it if you like. Maybe saunter over to the Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona, which even has a spot called the Rainbow Forest, which has what looks like tied eyed fossilized fallen trees.
But if you're hell bent on owning petrified wood, I did find in my Google adventure that for seventy nine dollars plus tax, Creighton Barrel will ship you a slab of petrified wood that you can use as a cheese board. And I read the reviews for this item and they were full of disappointment, such as quote I just received this and it looks nothing like the picture. Not a
single grain of wood color, just pure black. I understand that there are variations, it continues, but I could have spray painted a block black and it would look like this end quote. So you know, human beings, we purchase a slab of fucking majestic fossilized wood just for the purpose of serving cheese. We have it shipped to our doorstep, and it's never good enough. And I'm not saying that we're the worst species.
But and a.
Reminder that if you own cool stuff that is in limited supply on Earth that takes millions of years to form, specify in your will who gets it when you die. Write it on a post it note somewhere. Avoid it going in a landfill.
You can do it. It's not that hard.
Oh, speaking of easy Street, A bunch of you wrote in with a similar question, looking at you first time question asker Corey, Francis Parks, Maria Delgado Gomez, Lori Fishman, and Carson. A lot of people mentioned this phrase that I had never heard, uh, eric A Storvik, first time question asker, So naturally they had a few, but they said, why is rocks for jocks a thing? I had never heard this term before? Is this what people call like intro to geology class?
What is that that's actually really interesting? I hadn't had heard that term until a couple of months ago. And my best understanding is in some environments, especially introductory level geology classes are seen as just not rigorous or not enjoyable or not important.
Oh dare you?
And I think that is really It makes me really sad, and I think it's kind of dangerous because learning about Earth's science is really important for not only being able to appreciate the world around us, but a lot of what's happening in today's society, whether it's about climate change or natural resources, mining, deforestation, understanding a lot of what's going on today, it's really important to have the geologic
context for it. And you know, I don't think it's not that everyone needs to go become a geologist, but you know, having environments where people can go learn about Earth's science in a way that leaves them with an appreciation for it, I think is really really important.
Yeah, it also seems hard. It seems like a hard field.
It's not.
I really don't think geology is any more or less rigorous than physics or sociology or psychology. It's you know, it's its own science and its own complexities, and it's really interdisctionary. It is at the edge of a lot of fields, and it's really deeply painful to see geology look down. It's what I do for work, and I love it dearly, and I think it just it deserves as much a place as any other science in the public understanding.
Because context is everything. And after listening to Schmidty's love of rocks, will you ever see a rock the same? I think you will not. Okay, so on more questions
of yours. But first, before that, we donate to a cause of theologists choosing, and this week will split the donation to the first skype a Scientist, which is currently celebrating squid timber with some gorgeous squid stickers available at the link in the show note, and you can find out more about their mission to bring scientists into classrooms
and other gatherings at skypascientists dot com. We'll also throw a donation to mind dot dot org, the world's largest open database of minerals, rocks, and meteorites and the localities they come from. So mindt dot org is run by the not for profit Hudson Institute of Mineralogy. It's linked in the show notes. Those donations were made possible by sponsors of the show. Thank you very much. Okay, let's
get back to a very popular question. Ann Barnes, Lizziemarginetta Sword, Geo, Sassy Lee t Dave Schuster, Anna Thompson, Nancy K. Clark, Cassafrass, Hannah Matussek, Haleeboprix, Claire Irvine, Mocasey Sidney, Gina Woolsey, Michelle Dempsey, Matt Thompson, Abby Cox, r Gip seventeen, Jimmy Kishimoto, and Kelsey all asked about seeing geological formations, including patron Geochrissy, who wrote, from one geologist to another, I tell people I have a high visibility vest in my car for
changing car tires, but is really for stopping at road cuttings to take a look. So overall, where should a person go to see some cool ass rocks?
Oh? Wait, gosh, I have so many questions for you.
Oh this is great.
I mean, let's talk rock spotting, because there's so many times on the side of the road where you're like, why is that side of the road striped?
What am I not knowing as I pass this?
When it comes to rock spotting, what are some monuments that people might be familiar with or should be familiar with, and what are they seeing if you're in Moab or something, or you're driving past the Grand Canyon, or are there places that we can put geology in our heads just by looking out the window.
Yeah.
So one basic thing that almost anyone can do is when you're passing by road cut and you relate the layers. So I think the idea of things forming in layers is really fun mental to a lot of science, and it's very very very fundamental to a lot of geology.
One thing anyone can do is if you pass by a road cut, you can look at the layers of rock and if the layers are flat, you know that they're still in the way that they formed, because when rocks form, they form in flat layers, and it's always that the newest rocks are the ones on top, so you're always going younger as you go up and older as you go down, and that a lot of the times, if you're passing a road cut and so you see the layers are tilted or folded some way, you know
that that whole section of rock has somehow been lifted up, either as the techtonic plates are moving around and as mountains are being built. Sometimes you can see road cuts where rocks have been folded, so that means that they've been uplifted and they've been squished around, or a solid rock that you can go put your hand on has
moved around in such a bendy way. So yeah, even just by looking at like the way that the rock layers are tilted in a road cut, you can tell something about the history of that place.
Okay, for more on this, we need a geomorphology episode, and I need to find a geomorphologist. So I'm just going to ask anyone pulled over on the side of the road staring at a hill. Do geologists do a lot of their work in sites that have already been excavated for industry or what does a geologist job kind of look like?
Yeah, that does happen. There's a lot of jolly that goes on. For example, there's a lot that goes on the National State parks in which anywhere you get exposed rocks you can do geology, and that definitely includes mine areas. So I know, for one of the sites that I use for my PhD work is the site where we had these old corals exposed that formed eighty thousand years ago. And when I was sort of updating myself in the literature, I found a reference that like, oh, this site was
mapped ten years ago, but it's flooded now. Can't go back there because of industrial stuff.
Bumma.
I think any way that rocks get exposed is there's going to be someone out there who wants to study them. And road cuts again our really unique way because oftentimes you can't necessarily study what's going on in a hill because it's a hill.
It's hard to.
Dig straight down into bed rock. But when you get a road cut coming through, that's a really unique opportunity. To get to see the interior structure of the crust exposed.
Have you ever been looking at a road cut and saw something that shocked you.
Actually, one of the rocks I brought with me today I can describe it is I've picked it up at a road cut. And there's a classification scale of rocks and one of igneous rocks, and one of the categories is called an ultramafic rock, which means it's really high in iron and magnesium. And it means ultramafic rocks are typically rocks where the composition is really really close to what they were when they're deep in the Earth's mantle, so like, you know, hundreds of kilometers beneath the surface
of the Earth. And one of my favorite rocks is called an enstetite pretotite, which just means it's just like this really dense, beautiful bronze colored rocks, these huge square crystals in it. And this rock again was pretty much very similar composition to what's deep and like you can look down right now, it's deep below the surface of the Earth. And I found this rock at the top of a mountain, had no business being there. What how
this rock? You know, this blob of magma cooled in the crust, and eventually, over millions of years, it got lifted up and excavated and lifted up on the top of the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. And so it's really it's just really amazing to me getting to look at this rock and say, like, you formed under the strip of the earth and I found you, not like eight thousand feet above sea level. You'll have no business being there, how, It's just it's so fun.
Love it dearly.
Is there anyway someone had that in their pocket and brought it to the top of the mountain on purpose?
No, this was part of a like forty foot tall cliff of this stuff.
Okay, Okay, then probably no one had that in there.
Probably not.
I have heard of people pranking geologists by with somewhere on the internet, by bringing a rock from somewhere else with them and saying like, hey, I found this, And no one's ever done that to me. And I don't know if I'd catch it, But put that idea out there for anyone who wants to meet some of the geologist friends.
Apparently, it's all it takes us some chocolate pebbles.
Exactly, some chocolate pebbles exactly. That's a great way to prank them because a snack at the end.
Yes, what about rock names?
Bexwood Drifts wants to know what are the most ridiculous rock names? Katie King also had this question, and patron V E. Griffith divulged their favorite was coming tonight, and Batman Flight asked if coming tonight was the best name of all geological terms. Simon Bona Steele said, I look forward to your podcast. I wish it was coming tonight. Isn't dropping tonight? But what about names of things? Who are rocks named after? How do they get these names? What ends in an eight versus a night?
Yes, so a lot of rocks, the recent ones, has been named by scientists who discovered them. A lot of names have been what's called grandfather dame, which means they're just sort of names and popular use. And when jeologists sat down to like make forcial guidelines on what these rocks are called, they're like, well, this is what everyone calls it, so call But my personal favorite rock name is a classic. It's nice, So it's spelled g N E I S S and it's pronounced nice. There's a
lot of really great geology puns. Geology is rife with puns, and my personal I used to do the same.
People hated it.
Where I carried this piece of nice around with me and anytime I say we say lots something nice, I would whip it out of my pocket and say that's pretty nice. The other one is there's a metamorphic rock called schist s C H I S T, and that's also rife for puns, and I deeply appreciate anytime someone makes a geology.
Pun around me.
Many patrons, including Paul Smith, Amy and Ramatsu, Lee Anderson, specs Al, Robin Stumbo, Jacqueline Iwanitia, Laura Springer, Amy, Jane Joyed, Gwen Kelly, and Diana Teeter wanted to know if Schmidty enjoys geology puns.
Great question.
I mean, your questions keep getting bolder and it really helps me cobble together.
In interview, you're all gems.
Speaking of things at end, and I let's talk about one type of rock your favorite.
My favorite?
Right?
Okay?
Yes, what is your favorite? So many people I'm going to say their name is so fast and and aside, Amanda Spinosa, Hannah Riley Shelby, Smith, Rebecca fitch At, Jody Pierce, Truman, Szil Bubbery, Kaylee Dyer, Delaney Becks, Myrus Mantov, Kendall Hargas, Ariel Beck, Julia Fisher, Simon Bonisteel, Meghan Weidell. Need to know Schmidty, you're a geologist. We love you. You love rocks. What rocks do you love the most?
Awesome?
Okay, there's a few ways to answer that question. So probably my favorite individual rock that I own that I have with me is a piece of nice Nice. So it's just like this beautiful smooth rock with layered white crystals and sort of like white iron and nineties imrige crystals and then lighter quartz rich crystals on it. And this rock it's really fun because this specific rock is a long history, so it forms is a diary deep
beneath the surface of the Earth. So this magma moved up through the crust and crystal spell out of it eventually cooled, and then that diarye got put under intense heat and pressure and all these crystals rearranged themselves into stripy layers and became a nice and then eventually this rock somewhere in the northern part of North America was at the surface of the Earth and a glacier. So one of the ice sheets that used to cover North America picked it up and brought it to northern Wisconsin,
where I found it. Because where I picked this rock in northern Responsin it could not have come from around here, So the only way it got there is if it has been brought there by a glacier. So it's very personally near and dear to me because it tells a long history not only about the planet, but also about the amazing ice sheets that have shaped so much of the North American landscape.
SCHMIDI was holding up a round, flatish rock about palm sized that had a dark top and bottom with what looks like a crystallized white wafer smashed between and nice can have nice banded texture. I can see why this one is pocketworthy.
So I think that's my personal favorite.
That's your personal favorite. Do you name rocks or no?
I don't name rocks. I think they already have names.
Yeah, it's already got such a nice name.
Also exactly it does have a nice name.
Good. But it also one looks like a whoope pie. It definitely looks.
Edible and it's also it's I have a few rocks all carry around with me just as sort of like something to you know, something to fidget with. Like rocks can be really great sort of things to carry with you because they're really dense, so they have a nice weight to them. And this one has just like a perfect little indent that I can rep my thumb against.
When you go to different parts of the world where they have dry stacked walls rock walls, do you always have to stop and look at those two?
Always?
Anytime I see a rock in a wall or on the ground, I'm a terror walking through you neighborhood because I'm like, oh, that's a cool rock and someone's rock wall and person house is probably like, why are you paying attention to my garden wall?
What about something that sucks?
Something must suck about rocks, some's gotta suck s made come on?
Or about being a geologist.
Slightly left turn. But something that I think has very much plagues me in my science journey is something that I know a lot of people deal with in science, which is imposter syndrome. So especially when you're sort of a younger scientist in training, I feel like a lot of people struggle with a feeling that like, I don't belong here, they're going to find out any data. I
don't belong here, They're going to kick me out. And I think, you know, a lot of people experience it and a lot of people talk about it, and so I definitely struggle with it myself of feeling like, no, I'm not smart enough, I don't know enough about this material to be talking to you today. I don't belong here, and it's that can be really hard and painful to deal with, and having an amazing community of other scientists
and friends around you can really help with it. But I think that's something that we need to acknowledge because it's a really deeply painful thing to deal with, because that's the worst thing I can think of.
I can't really think of anything bad about rocks.
Just a serious side note.
Geosciences haven't always been the most inclusive of field and a twenty twenty study published in Nature Barriers to field work in undergraduate geoscience degrees, stated that these barriers are especially felt by disabled students and those from racial and ethnic minorities, all of whom are critically underrepresented in the discipline.
And other historically excluded minorities in geosciences have pointed to concerns about being targeted doing field work, a safety issue that was highlighted in twenty twenty when Christian Cooper, a blackbirder, was targeted and threatened in Central Park. There are also physical barriers for some sexual harassment at field sites have been reported and locations that are less than friendly to
LGBTQ folks. So Schmidty says that finding community is especially important and pointed to organizations like Urge on Learning Racism in Geoscience, which is working to help geoscientists on learn racism and improve accessibility, justice, equity, and inclusion in the discipline, which is so needed. And if you're part of a historically excluded group, finding a mentor can also be key. It seems like all the wrong people have imposter syndrome. Like if you have imposter syndrome, chances.
Are you belong there more than anyone. Thank you.
More to think about it.
What about your favorite thing about geology or about rocks?
I think my favorite thing is is what we're doing today is talking to people about geology in the world around us, because you know, I can spend all my time as a graduate student, time as an undergraduate learning all these amazing things about the earth and being excited about it on my own, but getting to share that with other people and see other people from all walks of life get excited about geology is the most fun thing.
So it's really fun going out and telling people I'm a geologist because a lot of people, you know, whether they're a little kid, they're a grandparent, a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, that's so exciting, and they'll ask me questions. Or for example, getting to volunteer
with organizations like skype a scientists. You know, a lot of people are really interested in this stuff, but they may never have had an opportunity to get to talk with geologists or getting to take a geology class, and just yeah, getting to share all this, all these amazing stories about how the world around us works. Getting to share that with people is just the most fun thing I can think of.
Do you have any advice for someone who thinks they want to be a geologist or a type of geology field where they need more people.
Yeah, I think if you want to be a geologist, if you're going to college, there's a lot of like connect with their geology department. I think the best advice I could give is talk to people. If there's other students studying geology, talk to them, see what classes they're taking, you know, see if there's any field experience as clubs you can join, if there's faculty members that are available, reach out to them and let them know that you're
passionate about this and you want to learn more. I think making personal connections in the field is something that is really helpful for both getting advice, getting mentorship, figuring out, you know, where's the right way for me to go. Yeah, I think just talking with people in the field, because a lot of us are really you know, we love what we do and we're really excited to talk about that and get to share that with people.
This has been a joy.
Everyone loves you and I understand why.
Thank you.
I admit I I was kind of nervous, but I'm a lot of fun.
You rocked.
Let's see you're picking up already.
So as per usual, ask smart people, not smart questions such as what the fuck is of rock? Because they love it and they will love telling you. And Schmidty is not on social media because they are smarter than us. But we're at Aliward On Instagram and Twitter, We're at ologies on both. There are links write in the show notes to the charities we supported this week, mindt dot org and Skype as scientists. There are tons of links up on my website at aliward dot com slash ologies,
slash Geology, as well as links to other episodes. You might like that we mentioned smologies, our kid friendly shorter versions of classics. You can find those in our feed or up at aliward dot com slash Smologies. Ze Grodriguez Thomas and Mercedes Matland of MINDGM Media edit those merch is available for your body and soul at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Susan Hale for handling that so much more.
Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group with a syst from Shannon Felts and Bonnie Dutch of the comedy podcast You Are That. Thank you Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling. Emily White of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts. Caleb Patten Bleeps episodes and those are available at aliworn dot com slash Ologies, dash Extras. Kelly R.
Dwyer does the website. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music, and the lead editor who puts all the pieces together each week and has a sparkly heart like a Geod Jarrett Slaper of mind gam Media. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this week's secret is that a few weeks ago, I divulged that I had given my dad a haircut while he was in hospice before he passed away, and I saved a lock of hair.
And I happened to go to Disneyland and I decided to drop a few strands off at the lawn in the front entrance. I don't know why. It just it seemed like a cosmically fun place to people watch and it was just sweet. No, it was there and was going to turn into a worm and a bird or something. Anyway, that was in mid August. I went back to Disneyland two days ago, and y'all, the lawn changed. That lawn
is different for the first time in fifty years. They changed the lawn at the gates of Disneyland, and it's astro turf now to save water. For the first time in fifty years. So I'm considering that some sort of practical joke from an astral plane from my dad, because I feel like he would laugh at that truly, of all the places. Two weeks later, anyway, hilarious, Dad could win. Okay, go have fun today.
All right, you deserve it. I say so bye, bye, Up.
I'm You're rock.
You're my rock.