Ologies with Alie Ward - Geology (ROCKS) Part 2 with Schmitty Thompson

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

We’re back! Listen to Part 1 first, then hit this follow-up with your favorite geologist Schmitty Thompson, who answers listener questions a-plenty. Such as: What is a geode? Are crystals in gift shops even real? Where’s the best place to look at rocks? Is ice a rock? Plus: rock puns, favorite rocks, best and worst rock names, long hikes, imposter syndrome, lab-grown diamonds, fossilized trees, space rocks, lead poisoning, and puns. Welcome back to Schmitty’s Geology Corner. We’ve been waiting for you. Schmitty’s bioDonations went to Skype a Scientist & MinDat.orgThose cool squid stickersOther episodes you may enjoy: Teuthology (SQUIDS), Areology (MARS), Ludology (VIDEO GAMES), Volcanology (VOLCANOES), Gemology (GEMS & MINERALS), Astrobiology (ALIENS), Eschatology (THE APOCALYPSE)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh hey, it's the rock in your pocket. Alleyward, back with part two of Geology. Have you listened 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 paleo climate

and glacial geology. And this follow-up episode will answer questions from hundreds of listeners who left their queries via patreon.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 the ologists. So thank you patrons for supporting the show from day one.

Thank you also to any listener who writes 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 Smology's 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, Shmitty Thompson. Do you have some time for me to keep you a little bit longer? Yeah, absolutely. No, you're the best. I've had nowhere to be. You're the best. You're the best. I'm like...

Yeah, of course. There's part of it that's like, can I make it a two-partner? We shall see. And we did. Thank you for being so patient of my very uninformed questions. Oh my gosh, no, no, no, no, no. It's great if someone comes to me like to tell me about rocks.

Like, why is that not a great thing? Like, that I get to be the person I want to be. Like, I want to be the person I want to be. I want to be the person I want to be. 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 McLendon, Ariel Belk, and Radha Vakarya 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, no. 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 exist in relative to other rocks. So for the most part, you know,

when you're thinking about when does a 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 range of temperatures. If you're heat up a rock until it became lava or magma, ice would just be vapor by that point. So I think it makes sense in some ways, you know,

if we're looking at the technicality and say, like, yeah, this fits in a lot 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? It's 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 the lowdown. 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 snow bank that has solidified or a glacier, thems 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 reason we're not just surrounded by one rock is that different minerals crystallize at 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 to sort. Like, oh, maybe a lot of the minerals that are deep in the center 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 a 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 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 agates. 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 60 feet to 25 miles deep in the Earth, but some, like diamonds and peridot, are a little more shy. They crystallize as deep as 125 miles below the surface of Earth,

125 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 millennials 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 73% 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 were 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. So like the rocks we have today were very different from the rocks that first formed 4.5 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 know the answer to that, but I know who I would ask about that.

So I might get back to you. So Schmiddi 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 Schmiddi'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 pickaxe.

But what about on other planets? So this next question was asked by patrons Gigi, 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 Steven Wu wants to know, how do we know if a rock is from space? And Alice Rubin chimed in, all rocks are from space. Technically, we are also from space. Do you have thoughts on space rocks? Absolutely, thoughts 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 hard to reach. And so, you know, a lot of our space rocks are from, not experiment meteorites. This is just a very broad overview, but a lot of the space rocks formed when the rest of the planets, rocky planets, were 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 moon. Isn't the moon a star? So you have rocks from the moon that 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 got ejected into space, and they landed on Earth.

For more on this, you can listen to the areology episode about Mars with Dr. Jennifer Booze, which covers not just Martian rocks, but also the time Dr. Booze got to handle moon rocks. And it didn't go well. And she lost her marbles. Also, the selenology episode with Raquel Nuno

is all about the moon. And we have it as a Smologies episode, in case you have small young people who want to learn about the moon. Smologies episodes are linked in the show notes. They're friendly for all ages. They're free. Speaking of ages,

Shmini says that Iowa-born geochemist Dr. 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 when we first figured out how old our 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 a rock to tell 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 blob 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 and 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 little 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 4.5 billion years

from a meteorite, and that age of the earth has stood the test of time. Like, that's a pretty darn good estimate. Faces. When we were trying to figure out how much uranium and lead there was in these meteorites, I think this was in the 30s or the 40s. You had to measure how much lead there was in the sample.

And this was back when we still had lead and 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 theorem procedures because lead was in the air, it was in his hair, it was in his gloves.

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 the samples. So get the lead out. That is all. So yes, Dr. Clara Patterson, well done. High fives. So we covered this in the Lodology episode

about video games with Dr. 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 II meant a baby boom that was maturing into individuals more likely to commit violent crimes. And a 2018 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 70s and 80s were eras

in which crime skyrocketed, end 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, Dr. Clara Patterson. You also had to work on the atom bomb too, but thanks for figuring out the lead stuff and that Earth is 4.543 billion years old. Give or take 50 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 about the size of an egg painted with these beautiful metallic edible paints. 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 under a microscope, licking it. Delicious. And so it's really hard. A lot of people send me pictures of rocks

and I oftentimes can't give them a good answer of what it is, but I thought let's try this. I sent a picture of this chocolate rock to some geology friends. I was like, what do you think this is? And they all gave rock answers and then I sent the back picture

of the rock chopped in half showing it was chopped from the raw various places. So a lot of chocolate rocks did a pretty good job. Mischief. Good natured fun with just a dash of endearing evil. Schmidtie, 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. There is a size of rock that above which a rock is a boulder, but boulder is a very common colloquial term. So I would love to track down that article and see exactly who was using the word boulder and should they have known better. I know. 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 a brain fart. 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 boulder

is completely blocking Eastbound Lane Highway 145 at Silver Peak Road. Please use caution. This was in January 2020 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 Lilly 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,

Mohamed 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 Mohamed wants to know, okay, I read there's a new type of rock that consists of plastics called plastic glomerates. And my question is how does that happen?

And what does it mean in the larger scheme of things also weak? Are there plastic rocks? I know there's chocolate rocks, but are there plastic ones? There are. So there is something that we can start plastic rocks. So just like how sand and silt and clay moves through

sort of the earth 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 going to, they're going to 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 I can reasonably assume that it's not something that was gross,

I pick it up. I try to pick it up. I have a little trash bin or rubber. I was up to empty my box before I do the laundry. That happened with me today. And I found some garbage in the pocket. And I forget where I even picked it up, but I 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. Chandler Witherington and Corey Francis Parks want to know, first time question asked by 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 know of 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 I'd recommend. If people are really interested in learning about rocks, there's a website called MnDAT 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 then also just these beautiful pictures

you can spend hours staring at. So that was MnDAT.org, M-I-N-D-A-T.org and I just accidentally went on and looked at citrines for 45 minutes and then I fell down a hole looking at different types of corundum which can be rubies and sapphires. Thanks MnDAT.

I fucked up my deadlines, but rocks are pretty. So yeah, I'd 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 rock-hounding group. So rock-hounding is a practice where you go and specifically go out and field to collect rocks. Sometimes you'll have a geological 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 try and identify them because really the best way to get to know the rocks and figure out how to identify them is just to 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 Carr, Jesse Dragon, Niki DeMarco, Ronja, Shy Cly, Catherine Griffith, Jody Pierce, Jesse B, Jen Skrull Alvarez, Nina Giacabe, Kelly Simone, Bex Woodruff, Amina, Abbey Dardis, Kristen Rosenblum, Anastasia Dougherty, Jenna Congdon and first-time question-asker Amy Banco and Brianna Armandara's 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, grey river pebble

that you can touch and feel, or it's, you know, a sort of more quartz-y, a more sort of gemstone-y crystal or a geode 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 that you're in. Well, I'm so glad you mentioned geodes, by the way. On that note, Paige McLaughlin, Megan A., Jody Pierce, Jeanette Moss-McCurdy, Frederick Raymond Cursell, Harper Thomas, Delaney, Amy Ducray, all had geode questions, and they were not the only ones. Because I got to ask,

Eveli Sanchez wants to know, what's up with geodes? Are they rocks? Are they crystals? Both? Grace Robichaud wants to know, are the Amethyst geodes sold at museums even real? What is a geode?

Yeah, a geode. I don't know the technical definition off the top of 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 document that, 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 yeah, geodes, 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 quartz. So a lot of the times, if you see them being sold, there's a good chance that they naturally grew like that,

but I do know sometimes if you go to, for example, a gift shop and you see brightly neon-colored gemstones, I'm pretty sure there are processes with which you can die minerals. So not everything you can go buy in a store is going to be naturally colored. Yes, remember how a lot of citrine points you see are really heated amethyst? Well, if you ever 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 citrines don't usually geode. So geodes are rocks that form with a pocket in them, kind of like a pita, 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, and the minerals in that water allow the crystalline rocks to form in the empty pita 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 spherolites professionally, but you can also call them thundereggs, 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 thunderegg. Florida's is agatized coral,

which is like a thunderegg, but it's a little bit more oceanic. Utah's state rock, coal. Okay. But Mississippi has an interesting, a good state rock, which was on the minds of patrons Cole Robertson, Emily Krager, Rachel Kendrick, and Sonia Bird Zero,

which we're going to talk about next. But at this point, I was just petrified of taking up too much of Schmidt's time. Sorry, we're just throwing so many questions at you. 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 wood 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 sediment, that 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. Hello, I'm Dee. 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 wood are not the most common ever. And oftentimes they can be a really important scientific resource. And then there's a national either a park or a monument that's this like 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 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 petrified wood I could go lick, but I don't think it will stick to my tongue. Report back. Let me know. 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 tie dyed fossilized fallen trees. But if you're hell bent on owning petrified wood, I did find in my Google adventure that for $79 plus tax, Crate and 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 and 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, Laurie Fishman, and Carson. A lot of people mentioned this phrase

that I had never heard. Erica Stormick, 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?

So that's actually really interesting. I hadn't 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. How dare you? And I think that is a really,

it makes me really sad and I think it's kind of dangerous because learning about Earth 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, you know, having environments where people can go learn about Earth 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.

Yeah, 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 with its own complexities and it's really interdisciplinary, at the edge of a lot of fields, and it's really deeply painful to see geology looked down. It's what I do for work, and I love it dearly,

and I think it deserves as much a place as any other science in the public understanding. Because context is everything, and after listening to Schmiddy's Love of Rocks, will you ever see a rock the same? I think you will not. Okay, so on to more questions of yours, but first, before that, we donate to a cause of geologists choosing,

and this week we'll split the donation to 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 skypescientist.com. We'll also throw a donation to mendat.org,

the world's largest open database of minerals, rocks, and meteorites, and the localities they come from. So mendat.org is run by the not-for-profit Hudson Institute of Minerology. 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.

Anne Barnes, Lizzie Marr, Jeanette Assort, Gio Sassi, Lee T. Dave Schuster, Anna Thompson, Nancy K. Clark, Cassifras, Hannah Matousek, Haley Bopri, Claire Irvine, Mo Casey, Sydney, Gina Woolsey, Michelle Dempsey, Matt Thompson, Abby Cox, R.J.I.P., 17, Jimmy Kishimoto, and Kelsey all asked about seeing geological formations, including patron Geo Chrissy,

who wrote, From one geologist to another, I tell people I have a high visibility vest in my car for changing car tires, but it's 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, 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 the basic thing that almost anyone can do is when you're passing by a road cut and you can look at the layers. So I think the idea of things forming in layers

is really fundamental 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 then a lot of the times, if you're passing a road cut and 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 tectonic 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. For 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 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's job kind of look like? Yeah, that does happen. There's a lot of geology that goes on.

For example, there's a lot that goes on in nationals, state parks, pretty much anywhere you get exposed to 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 this site where we had these old corals exposed that formed 80,000 years ago. And when I was sort of updating myself in the literature, I found a reference that like,

oh, this site was mapped 10 years ago, but it's flooded now. You can't go back there because of industrial stuff. 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, are a 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 bedrock. 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 picked it up at a road cut

and there's a classification scale of rocks and one of igneous rocks in one of the categories is called an ultromethic rock, which means it's really high in iron and magnesium and it means ultromethic rocks are typically rocks where the composition is really, really close to what they were with their 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 InstaTite Priditite, which just means it's just like this really dense, beautiful, bronze-colored rocks with these huge square crystals in it. And this rock, again, was pretty much very similar in composition to what's deep, but 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 off the top of the Bighorn 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 surface of the Earth and I found you've not, like, 8,000 feet above sea level. You have no business being there. It's just, it's so fun. Love it dearly. Is there any way someone had that in their pocket

and brought it to the top of the mountain on purpose? No, this was part of a, like, 40-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 putting 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 mess with a geologist's friend. Apparently it's all, it takes us some chocolate pebbles. Exactly, some chocolate pebbles, exactly.

That's a great way to prank them because you could snack at the end. Yes. What about rock names? Bex Wooddrifts 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 Bonestiel said, I look forward to your podcast. 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 an eight? Yes, so a lot of rocks, the recent ones have been named by scientists who discovered them. A lot of names have been what's called Grandfather Day,

which means they're just sort of names of popular use and when geologists sat down to make official guidelines on what these rocks are called, they were like, well, this is what everyone calls it, so we'll call it, 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 this thing, people hated it, where I carried this piece of nice around with me.

And anytime I'd say, someone would say, that's pretty nice. I would whip it out of my pocket and say, that's pretty nice. The other good one is there's a metamorphic rock and shist, 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 Neramatsu, Lee E. Anderson, SpexL, Robyn Stumbo, Jacqueline Iwanicha, Laura Springer,

Amy Jane Joy, 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 an interview.

You're all gems. Speaking of things that end at night, let's talk about one type of rock. Your favorite. My favorite. Yes. What is your favorite? So many people.

I'm going to say their names so fast and then decide. 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 noise. So it's just like this beautiful, smooth rock with layered white crystals

and sort of like white iron and 90s emerged crystals and then later quartz rich crystals on it. And this rock, it's really fun because this specific rock is a long history. So it forms as a diorite deep beneath the surface of the earth. So this magma moved up through the crust

and crystals fell out of it and eventually cooled. And then that diorite 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 up this rock in northern Wisconsin it could not have come from around here. So the only way it got there is if it was 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. Shmini was holding up a round, flat-ish 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 that nice banded texture. I can see why this one is pocket-worthy. 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. It also 100% looks like a whoopee pie. It definitely looks edible. And it's also, I have a few rocks I'll carry around with me just as sort of like something to, you know, something to fidget with. Rocks can be really great sort of things to carry with you

because they're very dense, so they have a nice weight to them. And this one has just like a perfect little indent that I can rub 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, you know, wall or on the ground.

I'm a terror walking through neighborhoods because I'm like, oh, that's a cool rock until with rock wall. And there's no house that's probably like, why are you paying attention to my garden wall? What about something that sucks? Something must suck about rocks. Some's got to suck. Shmiadi, come on.

Or about being a geologist. Slightly left turn, but something that I think has very much plagued 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 the feeling that like, I don't belong here.

They're going to find out any day that I don't belong here. They're going to kick me out. And I think, you know, a lot of people experience it. And not a lot of people talk about it. And so I definitely struggle with myself of feeling like, you know, 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 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 fields. And a 2020 study published in Nature, Barriers to Fieldwork 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 fieldwork, a safety issue that was highlighted in 2020 when Christian Cooper, a black birder, 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 Schmiddi says that finding community is especially important

to organizations like ERG 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. Do you think if you have imposter syndrome,

chances are you belong there more than anyone. It's more to think about it. What about your favorite thing about geology or about rocks? I think my favorite thing is what we're doing today, is talking to people about geology in the world around us because I can spend all my time as a graduate student, time as an undergraduate, learning all this 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. It's really fun going out and telling people I'm a geologist because a lot of people, 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 the Scientist, 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 get to take a geology class and just getting to share 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 connect with their geology department. I think the best advice I can give is talk to people.

If there's other students studying geology, talk to them, see what classes they're taking, see if there's any field experiences, 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 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, 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 was kind of nervous, but I had a lot of fun. You rocked. I just think you're picking it up already. So, as per usual, ask smart people not smart questions, such as what the fuck is a rock, because they love it and they will love telling you. And Schmitty is not on social media

because they are smarter than us, but we're at Ali Ward on Instagram and Twitter. We're at oligies on both. There are links right in the show notes to the charities we supported this week. Myndat.org and Skype is Scientist. There are tons of links up on my website at alleyward.com slash oligies slash geology,

as well as links to other episodes you might like that we mentioned. Smologies are kid-friendly, shorter versions of classics. You can find those in our feed or up at alleyward.com slash smologies. Zeke, Rodriguez, Thomas, and Mercedes Maitland of Mind Jam Media edit those. Merch is available for your body and soul

at oligiesmerch.com. Thank you, Susan Hale, for handling that and so much more. Thank you, Aaron Talbert, for admitting the oligies podcast Facebook group with assist from Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch of the Comedy Podcast. You are that. Thank you, Noelle Dilworth, for all the scheduling. Emily White of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts.

Caleb Patton bleeps episodes, and those are available at alleyward.com slash oligies slash 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 geode, Jared Sliper of Mind Jam Media. And if you stick around to the end of the episode,

I'll 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 lot 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 knowing 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 50 years, they changed the lawn at the gates of Disneyland and it's astroturf now to save water. For the first time in 50 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, good one. Okay, go have fun today. All right, you deserve it. I say so. Bye-bye. I'm your rock.

You're my rock.