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.
Most of the time the small earthquakes that happen in L.A. we don't feel here in Bakersfield, fortunately. But it still is dangerous and scary at the same time because those can happen one of the times we visit L.A.
ReplyDeleteI am sure those things we are learning about rock identification will help us in someway.