Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Identifying Rocks Can Be Hard! (GeoShort)

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Identifying Rocks Can Be Hard! (GeoShort) · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, how you doing today?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Jesse?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I'm doing really well.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for today's episode, to be honest with you.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: But before we get to that, let's do some brief introductions.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: You are Chris Bullheis, a nationally recognized Earth Science teacher from the great state of Michigan.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you are Jesse Remink, one of my former students, now a professor of geoscience at Penn State.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this is Planet Geo, a podcast where we talk about amazing aspects of our planet and why it matters to our everyday lives.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Chris, what's going on?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Not much.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Jesse?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm doing great.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Today's Geo Short is a funny one.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: We are going to talk about how identifying rocks can be actually kind of hard.
• 0:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I it can be.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: You and I both love rocks, right?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, ridiculous.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit weird, and it's a reason we're geologists, but it's a good thing there's a geology job out there because otherwise we'd just be weirdos.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I just funny things come to mind when we talk about identifying rocks.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today I was um was in my class, and you you you you're embarrassing, just so you know.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're you are embarrassing.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm embarrassed to be doing this podcast with you.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you another story that you don't know is coming right now.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you really don't know.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever heard this one before, but I have this um sample of Dolostone that I use in all my sets, right?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And dolestone can be a hard rock to identify.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And for the listeners who don't know, dole stone is like limestone, except it's a little bit different.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's whatever calcium, magnesium, carbonate.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, whatever.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, I um I'm in Bluefield, West Virginia, driving on a freeway.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We had just gotten out of a hotel and it's early in the morning.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm driving heavy traffic and so on.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I put I'm like, holy crap, there's some awesome red sandstone exposed in this rock cut, right?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I pull off alongside the freeway and I frog rid across the freeway, right?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm collecting, I got an armload of this red sandstone.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I'm got it cradled up against my chest, and this cop pulls up and hops out of school.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: He is yelling at me.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Get your butt out of here.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be doing this, you gotta go.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Okay, I'm on my way.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I go across the road, I throw this stuff in my trunk, you know, and I'm I'm I book it out of there, right?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and I'm thinking, okay, I got some cool sandstone though, right?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was worth it.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I get back to school uh after spring break.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I take them out of my trunk, go into class, and I'm like, I I take a look at this this sandstone, and I'm like, this isn't sandstone.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, huh?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Must be limestone.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I drop some ass on it, like, huh?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not limestone.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: What the hell is this?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so you I take a scissors, you know, I get the ass, it fizzes like a flat pop on my car and I got dole stone, cool.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I that's my Bluefield, West Virginia story with that.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was talking about this today with my class.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're really struggling with identifying some rocks, you know, and we're just we're working through sedimentary rocks, okay?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a bunch of them laid out, and I have this protocol that I have my kids go through, like this checklist.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: They as long as I do this every single time, I think it's bulletproof.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, we're talking about this, and the kids are like, but Mr.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Boy's limestone, you have like five different limestones in our sets, and they all look different, and they're all different colors, you know.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, You're right.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I said limestone's tough because you have this fist-sized sample of rock in your hand, right?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's out of context, you're not looking around.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's back up real quick.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: The limestone limestone is the stuff that gets dissolved by the groundwater, it makes your water hard, it also brings salt into the oceans, it gets deposited in the oceans because there's too much salt in the oceans.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, this is limestone.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, or you can crush it up and put it in an algine bottle and use it to get rid of it.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Risple heist, you get rid of your heartburn with limestone.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you had tacos and you forgot your pills, you gotta have limestone.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so there's many flavors of limestone for you here.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So many different looks to it, right?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know what, guys?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I you're right.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: This rock can be hard.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's the Katy Perry of Rocks.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because what a you you are an idiot.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know that?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: All right, why is it why is it the Katy Perry of Rocks?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can never identify Katy Perry.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I see her on the TV, you know.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, who's that?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Jenny looks at me, she's like, it's Katy Perry.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then you see her again, you're right out in some award show or whatever, you know.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Jen, who's that?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: She looks at me like, you're an idiot.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's Katy Perry.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You just asked me this last week.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then Jesse, I swear I would see her 10 minutes later.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, who's that?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I she has so many different looks.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: She changes her hair all the time.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: She's just got dip, she changes her outfits.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I I'm not a very observant guy.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't, I have no idea.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're not so limestone is the Katy Perry of Rocks.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I must say that's a decent analogy by the standards of your analogies.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's a decent analogy.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Katie Perry Limestone is the Katy Perry of Rocks.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good one.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: You have no room to be ripping on me about identifying rocks.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: But before we're listener, before we embarrass the hell out of Jesse here, uh, I will say that in my defense, my PhD supervisor, Tom Chaco, who has seen a lot of rocks, who has been working for many summers in the Northwest Territories, he always said that you can't really identify a rock in the field.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: You have to bring it back to the lab, you have to look at it under the microscope until to get a really specific identification.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, in my defense, before we dive into this embarrassing story, well, look, you're one of the most gifted students I ever had.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only compliment you're getting from me tonight.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it it, you know, you were taking this exam to get college credit in my high school class for so this was in high school.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was a junior in high school.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: You were junior, and end of the year, you only got one question wrong.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you sat at this desk.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was right in the corner.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was so frustrated.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: My memory sucks, but this is it blazed in my memory.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was back in the back of your classroom.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was just to the right of the door out the back of your classroom, and I got this.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: You had it was the rocks.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: You pass around the rocks, they all have a little number on them.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta like write down the name of the rock on the exam.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I got this one, it was like number 19 or something, and I could not freaking figure it out.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I sat there staring at it for like five minutes.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: The person who was supposed to get it after me was like, Hey, I need that rock.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, No, I can't.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know exactly how it forms.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you asked for it back when we were done.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: You asked, and I gave it to him.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, here you go.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna identify this.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because I could I was like, I know how this forms, it's a volcanic rock, it's has tons of vesicles, it's like a rhyolytic composition magma.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just could not remember the freaking name.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the simplest rock.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I tell my kids, like, hey guys, like you need to say thank you when you walk by me.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're doing this lab test, and I put pumice on, I expect gratitude for that.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have to be polite, don't be rude, you're not rude.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So say thanks, and you got it wrong.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that you're saying the only question I got wrong in the final exam was the gimme question.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: The gimme question that everybody gets.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember because I I I like, you know, would zoom into your class or before Zoom, it was Skype.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would always Skype into your class and give a little lecture.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And every time I did this, every year I did this throughout graduate school, I would zoom in and the students would already be laughing at me before I even showed up because you had told them that I was like the only student in history to ever get pumice wrong.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I walk in the room and there's just loads of disrespect being thrown in my life.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have to take you down.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're not done doing that, are you?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really cool thing.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: You always give a geochronology like lesson to my kids, and and I think it's awesome.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I hope we continue to do that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think I'm totally up for it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's it's super fun.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's super valuable.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I love doing it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So wait, well, that Jesse, like that's a wrap, man.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a wrap uh a little thing on identifying rocks for whatever that's worth, right?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a lot of people out there who who really like rocks and and you know are always looking at rocks and they don't know what they're looking at.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And sure, you and I know a little bit more about what we're looking at in regards to rock identification, but it can be it still could be pretty hard.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So and we gave a shout out to Katie Perry.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you're listening, if you're listening to Planet Geo, rock identification is hard, and you are the limestone of rock identification.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a compliment.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a compliment.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is, it is.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's a wrap.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see y'all next week.