Author: cmbail
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Going Global
Last week the William & Mary Geology department played host to a group of international geoscientists that descended upon Williamsburg from Japan and Oman. They were at William & Mary to attend the 3rd Critchfield Conference which focused on the Indian Ocean Basin: Navigating the 21st Century Marine Silk Road. Prior to their conference duties,…
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Where & When?
Here is the opening question from the last problem set in my Earth’s Environmental Systems course (GEOL 110). I thought my clues were amply generous. The photograph is of Palace Square in St. Petersburg, Russia. Google Earth is a great tool for checking out this scene and determining the latitude and longitude (59.9˚ N, 30.3˚…
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Water Gaps- worth a voyage across the Atlantic
Water gaps are intriguing and iconic landforms that have long drawn humans to them. We are all familiar with streams and rivers flowing in valleys; a water gap is dramatically different- it’s a place where a river cuts though a ridge or mountain range. Thomas Jefferson discusses the Potomac River water gap in his Notes…
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A Field Day
It is a rare weekday when I can slip away from the College. Yesterday with my colleague Brent Owens and research fellow John Hollis we played hooky and went to the field. Three weeks from now Brent and I will be leading a field trip for the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting: Traversing suspect…
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The Third Time is the Charm?
My Geology 110 course, Earth’s Environmental Systems, is a big class. 195 students are enrolled and we meet for 50 minutes at 9 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A big part of my job is to keep these 195 students engaged during our class meetings. This semester I am using LectureTools, a web-based software…
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Down the James in Three Days
The James River’s basin spans much of Virginia. Its headwaters start amongst the high ridges of the Allegheny Mountains, and the river system covers some 700 kilometers (~400 miles) before debouching into the Chesapeake Bay at Hampton Roads. The river crosses four of Virginia’s five geologic provinces and exposes a wide array of rocks. Outcrops…
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Convocation & Insolation
William & Mary is back in business for another academic year. I teach my first class at 9 a.m. on Wednesday—Geology 110: The Earth’s Environmental Systems; it’s an introductory class with 200 students enrolled. Later, on Wednesday afternoon the College will gather for Convocation, and this is the ceremony that really kicks off the academic…
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Westward Ho!
It’s just a day after commencement and I have landed in Arizona to await the arrival of 26 students enrolled in Geology 310: Regional Field Geology. The semester may be over, but the fun is not. Over the next three weeks we will traipse across the landscape of northern Arizona and Utah. We’ll study the…
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Senior Moments
The spring semester is rushing towards its conclusion. Classes have ended, final exams are underway, and graduation is just over a week away. The Geology Department’s class of 2012 is an accomplished and talented group. As I’ve noted before, all geology majors complete a year-long, independent senior thesis—this project is part of what makes the…
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A Mobile Mob: the Earth Structure & Dynamics Field Trip
This past Friday, the Earth Structure & Dynamics class assembled behind the Geology Department and then poured themselves into 3 vans and headed west to the Appalachian Mountains. Counting supernumeraries we totaled 36 people, which qualifies as a mobile mob. On this trip, students practice and hone their skills doing geology in the field and…
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What’s in a Name?
I’ve taught geology courses at William & Mary for over fifteen years, and during that time I’ve seen and heard a litany of student misconceptions about how the Earth, the Solar System, and the Universe work. Ask an introductory earth science class to explain why there are seasons in Williamsburg or what makes the sky…
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When Mountains Move
My first post as a W&M blogger came after our Utah field season during the summer of 2008. Indeed, we lived the high life that July, conducting geologic research on the Fish Lake Plateau, a broad and broken highland situated nearly 2 miles above sea level. My undergraduate research students: Trevor Buckley, JoBeth Carbaugh, and…
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Searching for Hylas
We are deep into the spring semester and my teaching/administrative duties are gobbling up most of my weekdays and nights. There is hardly a moment for research during the week, so research gets done on the weekends. I spent this past Saturday in the field searching for Hylas, the Hylas Fault Zone that is, not…
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It’s Gneiss to be Old
William & Mary is celebrating its 319th birthday this weekend. For an institution of higher learning in the western hemisphere, 319 years certainly qualifies as venerable. Although what qualifies as old depends on your perspective; geologists typically take a long view on time. It’s easy to do when you consider that the Earth’s history stretches…
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Earth Structure & Dynamics: Dreaming in 3D
One of the courses I am teaching this term is Earth Structure & Dynamics (GEOL 323), a second-level geology course, and a required class for all Geology majors. This course combines structural geology, tectonics, geophysics, and a pinch of historical geology. Thirty-four students enrolled in this year’s class, that’s plenty, and free seats are hard…
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Whose Fault is It? The 2011 Virginia Earthquake (Part 2)
In my last post I discussed the Virginia earthquake that shook eastern North America on August 23rd, 2011. Here is the second part of that story: unfortunately the answer to the question I pose in the title is not particularly satisfactory. We cannot answer the question about whose fault is it (or more precisely which…
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All Shook Up! The 2011 Virginia Earthquake
As the year comes to a close it is a fine time to reflect on the 2011 Virginia earthquake. It’s been four months since the Virginia earthquake jolted eastern North America, and we now know more about what happened. This moderate-size (Mw=5.8) quake–felt by millions of people from Alabama to Quebec–caused significant damage in Louisa…
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Blue Ridge Rocks: the microscopic view
The Alberene Dream Team spent the summer of 2011 in the field working to understand the geology of the eastern Blue Ridge. As summer turned into the fall semester, the team compiled their data and started to analyze the buckets of rocks we’d collected during the field campaign. In the Geology Department we cut rocks…