Week 9/28/12

Man I thought Geology B10 was a waste and super boring! But.... Then... Yesterday!

Each year in one of the buildings at the Kern County Fair, rocks are up for display. I've always been interested and looked at each display because I think rocks are sort of interesting to look at and can be pretty. This year it was a completely different experience for me. While I was looking at rocks in each display I was like Oh My God, in my lab we studied this one and this one and in class we learned about this one and this one! I felt so smart! My boyfriend and sister were really impressed at first but then they got over it and ignored me because I would go up to each display and point the rocks out and talk about them like a little kid. Lol(:
In the displays I saw many rocks we studied and learned about.
I saw: Tuff, Marble, Schist, Slate, many different types of Quartz, Coal, Sandstone, Shale, Limestone, Diatomite, Diorite, Granite, Dacite, Andesite, Basalt, Bauxite, Sulphur, Galena, Kernite, Calcite, Biotite, Pyrite, and even more!
I regret not taking a picture to post in my blog.
There were older geologists in the museum that were extremely nice! They told me that they found most of the rocks in a certain display in deserts around Kern County. They had a table with a few rocks and a black light machine and they allowed you to put each rock under the light and watch the effects it had on the rock. Most of them turned a combination of green and orange while others turned a combination of pink, purple, and white.

I will never look at the display of rocks the same way I used to. I used to just admire them but now I can do that and have knowledge of what I'm looking at.

Next year I'm going to go back and hopefully I'll keep the knowledge of the rocks with me and shock myself again.

Everyone that is in Geology B10 right now should try to go to the fair before it's over to look at the rocks! You'll suprise yourself of how much knowledge you now have on rocks!(:

Week 9/21/12

Recently in August, a new study was posted under the Geology News website that proposed large methane reservoirs under Antarctic ice sheets. From researching Methane I discovered many traits that the compound has. Methane is a greenhouse gas and is tetrahedral.  I found that Methane is a parent group to Alkane. I also discovered that methane is a colorless gas that has a density of 655.6 mL.  Its melting point is -182 degrees Celsius and its boiling point is in between -164 and -160 degrees Celsius. It is considered an organic compound on Earth.

The study records that old organic matter in sedimentary landforms that are located under the Antarctic Ice Sheet may have been converted to methane. This is resulted by micro-organisms living beneath oxygen-deprived conditions. It is thought that the methane could expose old sediments if the ice sheets shrink.

Week 9/7/12

This week a small earthquake hit Beverly Hills and struck two dangerous faults that run right through Los Angeles. The faults could have triggered a magnitude 7 earth quake. Luckily it hit a magnitude of 3.5 .The quake ran underneath the Santa Monica Boulevard. The intersection of the faults was a T-shaped that could have been very dangerous.

This week in class and lab we learned how to identify rocks and minerals by preforming certain tests such as testing the hardness. By testing the hardness the tools you need is your fingernail, a penny, a class plate, and a steel file. The way it works it to scratch the rock on the tools to eventually see what it scratches and what it does not. If a rock was to only scratch your fingernail it has a hardness of 2.5. We also learned how to identify the cleavage, cleavage being the planar surfaces along which a mineral tends to break preferentially. These properties combined with color, streak, and luster tends to help identify minerals.

In class we began to discuss the types of rocks such as igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.