Seminar 5 - Volcanoes

Linking nicely to Seminar 4, No. 5 is on the subject of Volcanoes, which are the source of many of the finer grained igneous rocks.  I cover the type of volcanoes, eruption styles and eruption products.  Some famous eruptions are considered as well with observations on some of the volcanoes which can be seen around the world.  The topic of whether volcanic eruptions can be predicted is also discussed.

The next Seminar in sequence, No. 6 will look at the third and last of the rock groups, the Metamorphic Rocks.

Seminar 4 - Igneous Rocks

The fourth Seminar is the series is on the second of the three rock groups; Igneous Rocks.  I look at the different types of igneous rocks, how they can form from the other two rock groups, how geologists classify them and common examples.

What has happened to Seminar 3, you ask?  Problem with the recording file I'm afraid which will need sorting out or re-recording.

Seminar 5 links nicely to No. 4, being on Volcanoes and is the last recording files I have "on the stocks".

Taking Time - Seminar 2 - Geology and Time

One aspect that can be difficult to grasp when first studying geology is the timescales involved.  Humans normal consider time in terms of hours, days, months, years decades and centuries.  The geologists generally consider time in terms of millions of years.  Anything less than 10,000 years is not considered to be significant!  This is because of the long timescales that geological processes occur over.

The second Seminar focuses on Time and its relationship to Geology.  I look at the timescales relevant to the geologist in terms of the Age of the Earth and the geological periods before looking at how the geologist dates rocks using a variety of techniques including Radiometric Dating. 

There is an old story of a museum guide who was leading a tour around a natural history museum and stopping beside the skeleton of a dinosaur he proudly stated that it was 60,000,007 years old.  The people in the group were impressed and one asked how the skeleton could be dated that accurately.  The answer was "the skeleton was dated by an expert to be 60,000,000 years old and that was 7 years ago".  Geology does not use that precise a timescale!

Here is the recording of Seminar 2 freshly compressed for the viewer. 

Everybody walks the Dinosaur - Seminar 17

Before delivering Seminar 17 on the Dinosaurs, a colleague asked if two young relatives of hers (grandsons) living on the Isle of Wight would be allowed to view the presentation because they were interested in Dinosaurs.  Of course I said, but thought they might find the content a bit too high level for them.  The standard of the material is aimed to be A Level Geology / First Year Geology Degree Level which is posisbly a bt much for ages 6 and 8.  Saying that I was giving my 9 year old nephew some coaching for the 11+ exams which he will be sitting in a year or so.  The test questions we were going through look alot harder than those I had to answer when I sat the 12+ exam, mind you that was over 20 years ago now!

Anyway I digress.  The recording for Seminar 17 has been compressed and is published below for the viewer.

Whilst I am on the topic of dinosaurs, my nephew and niece recently visited the Natural History Museum in London and confirmed that "Dippy" the Diplodocus is still in place in the entrance hall, although the plan is for the skeleton to move out to be replaced by a whale skeleton in 2017.

Going forward the remaining recordings I have on file plus new ones will be published in sequence as and when I get the files compressed.  I am still not completly happy with the fix I have for getting the file size down but until I find an alternative, it will have to do.

Cooking with Gas - Seminar 1

Two milestones achieved today, firstly the IT department sorted out an interim fix in order to allow me to compresses .mp4 files down to a more user friendly size for uploading onto the blog.  The video quality has suffered a bit but hopefully is acceptable.

Secondly I have got round to recording Seminar 1, the first in series which I did not record on either of the two occasions I delivered it previously.

As referred to in my first Post, Seminar 1 is essentially an introduction to the topic of Geology and at a very high level covers topics which will be talked about in greater detail in subsequent Seminars, each of which will focus on a particular aspect.  I also introduce a number of historical and current geologists who I consider to be particularly notable (those living who are not on the list should not be offended; I need to keep the presentation down to a realistic length and you omission in no way demeans your importance in the field of geology).

So far I have not had any comments or feedback on previous posts or on the Seminar recordings.  Any feedback is welcome, good or bad in the name of continuous improvement.

Now that I have a mechanism to compress file sizes down I will progressively upload the recordings I have filed for Seminars 2 to 5 and 17 for the viewer to peruse.  Seminar 17 will probably be next (yes I realise this is out of sequence) because I have a request to make the recording available for two budding geologists.  Happy viewing.

Geoethics

Is this a new branch of Geology?

This morning I received and email flier from the Geological Society publicising a new Publication on Geoethics: The Role and Responsibility of Geoscientists. 






The description of the publication on the Geological Society Publishing House web site is as follows:



Can be yours for £85.00 or £42.00 if you are a Fellow or member of another qualifying organisation.

I am sure that this publication has its genesis with the court case in Italy where there was an attend to prosecute scientists for not accurately predicting that an earthquake was going to occur.  This was the L'Aquila earthquake which occurred 2009 (not the ones which occurred in 1461 or 1703!). 

In October 2012 six Italian scientists (and one government official) were prosecuted for failing to predict that the earthquake was going to occur.  As I stated in Seminar 15, prediction of earthquakes is not an exact science and the prosecution and sentencing of 6 years in jail apiece was not considered by many to be sound.  Fortunately the convictions were overturned in November 2014.

The trial and prosecution seems to have partly been due to the fact that an Italian lab technician claimed to have predicted that a major earthquake was going to occur in the area a month before after measuring increased levels of radon gas being emitted from the ground.  Predicting earthquakes using radon emissions has been studied by scientists, but the results are inconsistent.