Please be sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE. You can support my educational videos by clicking on the "Thanks" button just above (right of Like button) or by going here: www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EWUSLG3GBS5W8 Or: www.buymeacoffee.com/shawnwillsey
In 1966 I was a freshman taking Geo 101. Scientific American magazine (before it became a political science publication) had an article about continental drift. Being a foolish freshman I asked the professor , who was the head of the department, if this made sense. As I recall nearly 60 years ago, one argument had to do with coast line levels. His reply was something about cyclothems, some sort of periodic fluctuation in seal levels due to unknown reasons. After two years in geology, with a dexterity failure in preparing thin sections on slides t identify minerals., I switched to math as a major. After teaching in high school I managed to get into Duke as a grad student in computer science, met my wife of 44 years, and pretty much lived happily ever after. But I'm still a geology dilettante, and watch you and Nick Zentner as often as possible.
I first learned about Wegener and continental drift in high school in Germany, which got me quite interested in geology in general. That was some 45 years ago, and life and other interests took over. Then I started following you for the Iceland updates. Have watched all of your videos since, plus many from other channels, and I love geology more than ever. Thank you!
Thankyou professor Shawn. I'am 59 years old and I really enjoy listening and watching your Islandic, Hawaian and geological videos. Your English is easy to understand even though I'm Mexican. Enjoy your trip with your family.
PERFECT timing. Have seen all your mineral lessons, roadside geology, “field trips”, and volcano reporting. (All Absolutely wonderful.). Visited Ohio friend and in her backyard were fossils and clamshells in the rocks! No ocean for hundreds of miles, so got me wondering…now i am waiting for geology 101 lesson #3.
Thank you Shawn. I just Googled "best teaching styles" and your name was at the top of the list. Just kidding, but you are among the top 1-2 educators I have seen in action over my long career.
Looking forward to your future episodes, especially on continental Africa, I've been curious ever since reading Thomas Sowell's observations on the geological, geographical, and climatological influences on cultural development. What struck me was that Africa is, for the most part, a high plateau with the East coast being very steep, and so on. Thank you, most informative and engaging.
Best refresher I've ever had ! Not only the 101 but also the live streams and your other videos.Thanks you so much again. If someone had promised me a geology prof like you, I would have dared to study it! Ended up in humanities ...well, was o.k. 🙂
I'm captivated by Nick Zentner's YT content (from Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington, USA). That said, my degree is in history and, although I took a 151 Geo class at Central forty five years ago, more than a bit of the content goes over my head. This in a wonderful refresher that will hopefully help me fully emerse in the excellent Geology content Dr. Zentner and the Central Geo professors & staff are producing.
Thanks for illuminating the distinction between continental drift and plate tectonics. In my mind, they've always been synonymous, which is why I thought PT was obvious long before that mechanism was discovered. Eager to see what new knowledge Lesson 3 will impart.
Thanks Shawn for this class on plate tectonic. How fascinating. You explained it so well. I was so fascinated by what you were saying that the time flew by. I really enjoyed it. You are a very good teacher. Again thank you.
Thank you so much Shawn for all your lessons!🙏🏼My story is exactly like the story of @mungbean60. My life and understanding of our planet became so much richer because of you! Besides you’re a great teacher you are a very likable person. Love from the Netherlands 🧡🙏🏼🧡
Why did Pangea exist at all? What created such a large lopsided land mass only in one section of the earth? Was it caused by a huge impact? (Creation of the moon) Also curious as to why there is a land mass for Antarctica but not the Arctic. What existed before Pangea? It doesn’t make sense to me that the formation of Pangea is due to only plate tectonics.
I have trouble wrapping my head around this too. Only one continent? If so what happened to cause it to split up into all the current plates? And what existed before Pangea? Was it the ice ball earth? Hopefully this will come out in future lectures.
Thanks for your kind donation. We have evidence of several other supercontinents that existed before Pangea such as Rodinia around a billion years ago. In short, ocean basins spread and open but then close again, bringing the continents back together. It is know as the supercontinent cycle or Wilson cycle.
@@shawnwillsey thanks! Interesting 🤔 Thinking about that. Without doing research yet, I’m supposing there are many forces at work, gravity (sinking, floating), convection, and coriolis come to mind. These forces also exist in the atmosphere and we get all sorts of weird phenomena. I guess in my mind I was still thinking about how a more homogeneous material would behave and how homogenous materials that are able to ‘flow’ assume perfect spheres in space. I think there is still at least 3 theories about how the moon formed (captured, huge asteroid impact, or stuff collecting over time from the dust accretion disk around the earth). Is there any relation to the continental formation and the theories of the creation of the moon. Thanks for this series you’ve created! I’m retired now and have time to explore my varied interests!
I started this video soon after you uploaded it, but life got unexpectedly busy and I’ve had to wait until Saturday night to finish it. Argh! You really have a gift for laying out a good survey course amount of learning, especially given you’re not getting any personal feedback from seeing our faces in the same room or know the backgrounds of all of your viewers. I’ve been rewatching or watching your rock and mineral ID videos, older videos and all the current ones. I purchased the Simon & Schuster rock & mineral book you recommended, too. I’m a college prof too, in music, so from one to another, I tip my hat to you: respect and appreciation from Minnesota!
Hi Shawn Willsey, great job as always, particularly like that it is so natural flowing from you with ease. I grew up near the Hudson River and first climbed on the crude , crumbling basalt columns of the Palisades and remember from a kid learning it was identical to a wall on the northern coast of Africa.
Ahh first year lectures again! Love it! I’d forgotten the details. What’s new to me is the future predictions of the plates. Thanks again. (Sent a PayPal donation the other week - really appreciate all your work and time).
Yet another exciting episode of your Geology 101 series! Again, you have a captivating way of explaining complicated things. I can't thank you enough for doing this, Shawn :) When I was young, plate tectonics was somewhat "new", barely known to the general public and not taught at all in French schools before the 80s anyway. When I later found out about it, I was fascinated... Also, very interested in what you said about the magnetic signature of rocks, hope to dig further into this... And now on to Tectonics part 2! ;)
I look forward to more episodes. At college...a long time ago...I focused my science requirements on earth the sciences. I took intro to geology, physical geography, geomorphology, cartography, and urban geography. The latter one also involved history and social science. I had several field trips in the Arizona desert. My favorite was to an alluvial fan.
This is great! I'm going to recommend this series to friends who are interested in geology. Just liked and subscribed with the first video. I've loved the whole topic of geology since the age of 12 (blame Jules Verne lol) and yours is one of the best online series on TH-cam. Thank you for uploading, Professor. Your channel is one of the reasons I refer to TH-cam as my "free university".
Excellent video. Have been following all your updates on Iceland and this (after episode #1) really starts to put everything into context.
7 หลายเดือนก่อน
I love your geologylessons! I Think I'm learning! 😅 At least I'm paying attention now - as a teen in school, not so much.. 🫣 Thank You Professor! Looking forward to 101 #2 part 2 ! Wishing you + fam. a nice weekend! Greetings from Värmland Sweden
Thanks Prof Shawn for the lesson. I wondered what extra info could be found via the TH-cam links to your slides on continental movements and Earth's magnetic field - the 1st worked fine but the 2nd linked video no longer exists. You're welcome ;)
I once saw an animation of the western US being pulled apart and Nevada gets split into two with a new seaway up and down in the center. Las Vegas will be a seaport on the Pacific Ocean about 15 to 20 million years from now! It also showed a new coastal mountain range going up and down the western edge along the part that the LA to Portland drifted area will be looking at to its east by then. Fascinating continetal drift stuff professor.
Thank you so much, Prof Willsey. I am super excited about your initiative to deliver lectures about important geology topics, in addition to the fieldwork videos you have been doing. I cannot thank you enough. Cheers. The lectures about the basics of geology are really helpful for people like myself. Thank you.
Thank You!!🤗 You are such a fantastic teacher and make everything soo easy to understand and soo interesting!!👍 If I would have had You as my teacher in school I would definatley have become a geologist!! Glad to get to learn all this now !! Better late than never!! 🤗👍
About 1960 I commented to my Geography teacher about the similarity of Western Africa to South America in my GCE O level course. He dismissed it as pure coincidence. He probably studied for his degree about 1930
Thanks, I enjoyed that a lot. Lately there's been talk of New Zealand being part of a "new" continent or plate. I look forward to any input you share about that.
What really blows my mind is how much time is involved here. Millions, billions of years? It's very hard to wrap my head around this. I am not a creationist, by the way & don't understand their claims at all. It's simply amazing!
I am using this course. Reading a book on Krakatoa. A good part of the discussion thus far has been about plate tectonics. Not a dep dive but being able to use the vocabulary. 😎
Thanks for the video Shawn. I would have thought that you would have put the seafloor spreading earlier in the video for more of a chronological order of relevant discoveries where the bands of magnetic reversal in the sea floors that was discovered during WW II by the navies searching for submarines.
6:10 Surprised to see your animation has North America drifting northward over the next 50 million years. I thought that the general motion of (most of) North America currently is slightly south of due west, with NA having peaked in northerly latitude several millions of years ago.
Hey Shawn! Awesome presentation! Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge with us! I did have a question of sorts. When you presented plate movements in the future, I noticed it didn't account for things like the formation of the East African Rift and the splitting of Africa. Was the video you showed representing plate movements as they are as of today and they do not change directions from their current movements? Thank you!
@shawnwillsey Naive question about your comments about the climate changes when australia moves north or baja california goes north- I was under the impression that the placement of the continents also affects the oceanic and atmospheric currents. So as the plates keep moving the weather patterns worldwide might significantly change. Perhaps you might cover this aspect as you describe the plates in more detail.
In my experience, climatology and oceanography is not really discussed in an intro geology class. Could be that Shawn will make a mention of climate changes when he covers deep time in an example later, but this video may be all that is covered about climate in this class. Yet, AFAIK, there is no easy way to determine an expected climate by looking at land distribution on the planet.
@@TheDanEdwards Let's see what Shawn says. Geogirl had some videos covering how the ocean currents were affected. For example if there is no Atlantic ocean there is no gulf stream carrying warm waters to Europe...
At start of your lecture, you mention "in person lab". Do you drill holes down and create mini volcano in your lab so students get to scoop up some lava to dip it in a water-filled bucket and then analyze it? 🙂 Do you let lava flow in corridors so students can see the difference between A-Ah and Pahoehoe 🙂 BTW, did you ever watch the series "From the Earth to the Moon" ? One episode at end of series is dedicated to geologists teaching astronauts on what to look for on the moon.
Shawn, thanks so much for posting this content. I always wished that I taken a course in geology while in college, and now that I'm retired, I have time to enjoy your videos. What text do you use with your course?
I know one thing that's evidence of plate tectonics is that the mountains we have in the north of Scotland have been discovered to be the same range as the Appalachians!
Maybe beyond an= 101 course, but would be interested for your take on the work of Karin Sigloch tracking what happens to subducting plates as the go down.
Can we tell whether there’s convection within the mantle as a whole? Do we know for a fact that today it’s more like a layer of firm tofu-squishable but ultimately solid-than it is one of some extremely viscous fluid like pitch? Thank you for these videos. Geology is one of the classes that I didn’t manage to take during college.
What a great refresher! Question: how do you measure the magnetic signature of rocks? I assume they need to stay in place during measuring. Or is it enough to precisely record the orientation of the rocks when still in situ?
It is a complicated process. First, they use a gasoline powered diamond tipped coring tool that is water cooled to drill down about 2 inches, then they use a Brunton or other compass to mark magnetic north on the sample and take it back to the lab to test the strike and dip of the magnetism stored in the rock. There are video on TH-cam about the process.
@@johncooper4637 Thank you! So the strike and dip are measured in a lab. That does need careful documentation, but doable of course. I'll find some docu's about it and learn more.
Gdey Shawn great work mate. Love you work, but I've got a couple of questions about the model for continental drift 50 million years into the future. Firstly what happened to the East African Rift? There's been no change and secondly where did Tasmania go?
Theoretically, how high could the Himalayas get before their height simply crushes and laterally fluidizes the lower rocks? Right now I calculate about 35,000 psi (didn't show my work) under Mount Everest.
Please be sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE. You can support my educational videos by clicking on the "Thanks" button just above (right of Like button) or by going here: www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EWUSLG3GBS5W8 Or: www.buymeacoffee.com/shawnwillsey
This is so fascinating! You know your teacher is outstanding when the presentation flies by and you don’t want it to end. 👏🏼
Thank you - it helps solve my "I wish I had taken Geology in college" need
Same here.
In 1966 I was a freshman taking Geo 101. Scientific American magazine (before it became a political science publication) had an article about continental drift. Being a foolish freshman I asked the professor , who was the head of the department, if this made sense. As I recall nearly 60 years ago, one argument had to do with coast line levels. His reply was something about cyclothems, some sort of periodic fluctuation in seal levels due to unknown reasons. After two years in geology, with a dexterity failure in preparing thin sections on slides t identify minerals., I switched to math as a major. After teaching in high school I managed to get into Duke as a grad student in computer science, met my wife of 44 years, and pretty much lived happily ever after. But I'm still a geology dilettante, and watch you and Nick Zentner as often as possible.
A fascinating topic, thanks again!
Glad you enjoyed it!
thanks professor, you really explain this complex stuff in understandable words.
ありがとうございます！
I first learned about Wegener and continental drift in high school in Germany, which got me quite interested in geology in general. That was some 45 years ago, and life and other interests took over. Then I started following you for the Iceland updates. Have watched all of your videos since, plus many from other channels, and I love geology more than ever. Thank you!
Awesome. Glad to hear this.
Wow! Fantastic explanation, thanks Shawn for sharing your knowledge with us 👍
¡Gracias! A small donation, but with admiration.
Garcias por tu amabilidad
Thankyou professor Shawn. I'am 59 years old and I really enjoy listening and watching your Islandic, Hawaian and geological videos. Your English is easy to understand even though I'm Mexican. Enjoy your trip with your family.
Excelente!
I'm 71 and still passionate about geology and learning about our earth. Also LOVE to meet people who are also interested in this!
Thanks!
PERFECT timing. Have seen all your mineral lessons, roadside geology, “field trips”, and volcano reporting. (All Absolutely wonderful.). Visited Ohio friend and in her backyard were fossils and clamshells in the rocks! No ocean for hundreds of miles, so got me wondering…now i am waiting for geology 101 lesson #3.
Appreciate these so much Shawn, thank you.
Thank you Shawn. I just Googled "best teaching styles" and your name was at the top of the list. Just kidding, but you are among the top 1-2 educators I have seen in action over my long career.
Truly loving this new series, much appreciated!!
Looking forward to your future episodes, especially on continental Africa, I've been curious ever since reading Thomas Sowell's observations on the geological, geographical, and climatological influences on cultural development. What struck me was that Africa is, for the most part, a high plateau with the East coast being very steep, and so on. Thank you, most informative and engaging.
Thanks! Finally getting around to pony-ing up. All the Iceland material, interviews, random road cuts, and now this 101 series.
Thanks for all the hard work on these videos!
Can't wait for the next episode. We will find out if I remember the basic tectonic boundaries, convergent, divergent and strike slip.
the paleomagnetism story was really interested story, thanks again Dr. Shwan Willsey
Best refresher I've ever had ! Not only the 101 but also the live streams and your other videos.Thanks you so much again. If someone had promised me a geology prof like you, I would have dared to study it! Ended up in humanities ...well, was o.k. 🙂
I'm captivated by Nick Zentner's YT content (from Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington, USA). That said, my degree is in history and, although I took a 151 Geo class at Central forty five years ago, more than a bit of the content goes over my head. This in a wonderful refresher that will hopefully help me fully emerse in the excellent Geology content Dr. Zentner and the Central Geo professors & staff are producing.
Thanks for illuminating the distinction between continental drift and plate tectonics. In my mind, they've always been synonymous, which is why I thought PT was obvious long before that mechanism was discovered.
Eager to see what new knowledge Lesson 3 will impart.
Thank you so much, Professor, you're absolutely fascinating to listen to.
Such a great update to my geology course from years ago! Thank
You!
Your blessed as a teacher, at 37 I can’t concentrate on books or lectures, you make it effortless for me, god bless ya
Wow, thank you. Glad these are helpful.
Thanks Shawn for this class on plate tectonic. How fascinating. You explained it so well. I was so fascinated by what you were saying that the time flew by. I really enjoyed it. You are a very good teacher. Again thank you.
Thank you! Such a clear presentation of tectonics. Interesting to see what the continental lineup looks like next. Baja BC, The Sequel!
Thank you so much Shawn for all your lessons!🙏🏼My story is exactly like the story of @mungbean60. My life and understanding of our planet became so much richer because of you! Besides you’re a great teacher you are a very likable person. Love from the Netherlands 🧡🙏🏼🧡
This leads to a lot more questions for me - looking forward to future videos!
Thanks! Another great video, Shawn. Enjoying your channel very much!
Thank you kindly for your donation. Glad to hear you enjoy these.
Why did Pangea exist at all? What created such a large lopsided land mass only in one section of the earth? Was it caused by a huge impact? (Creation of the moon) Also curious as to why there is a land mass for Antarctica but not the Arctic. What existed before Pangea? It doesn’t make sense to me that the formation of Pangea is due to only plate tectonics.
I have trouble wrapping my head around this too. Only one continent? If so what happened to cause it to split up into all the current plates? And what existed before Pangea? Was it the ice ball earth? Hopefully this will come out in future lectures.
Thanks for your kind donation. We have evidence of several other supercontinents that existed before Pangea such as Rodinia around a billion years ago. In short, ocean basins spread and open but then close again, bringing the continents back together. It is know as the supercontinent cycle or Wilson cycle.
@@shawnwillsey thanks! Interesting 🤔 Thinking about that. Without doing research yet, I’m supposing there are many forces at work, gravity (sinking, floating), convection, and coriolis come to mind. These forces also exist in the atmosphere and we get all sorts of weird phenomena. I guess in my mind I was still thinking about how a more homogeneous material would behave and how homogenous materials that are able to ‘flow’ assume perfect spheres in space.
I think there is still at least 3 theories about how the moon formed (captured, huge asteroid impact, or stuff collecting over time from the dust accretion disk around the earth). Is there any relation to the continental formation and the theories of the creation of the moon.
Thanks for this series you’ve created! I’m retired now and have time to explore my varied interests!
Thank you Shawn.
I really love these lectures. They reinforce what I learned many years ago.
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to get the basics. Really fascinating and so clearly taught!
I started this video soon after you uploaded it, but life got unexpectedly busy and I’ve had to wait until Saturday night to finish it. Argh! You really have a gift for laying out a good survey course amount of learning, especially given you’re not getting any personal feedback from seeing our faces in the same room or know the backgrounds of all of your viewers. I’ve been rewatching or watching your rock and mineral ID videos, older videos and all the current ones. I purchased the Simon & Schuster rock & mineral book you recommended, too. I’m a college prof too, in music, so from one to another, I tip my hat to you: respect and appreciation from Minnesota!
I really start understanding geology with you... i appreciate all what you do thanks.
Thank you, Shawn. The time just flew by, it was fascinating to get some of the history around the development of the theory of plate tectonics.
Very enjoyable, many thanks for taking your time to help others
Hi Shawn Willsey, great job as always, particularly like that it is so natural flowing from you with ease. I grew up near the Hudson River and first climbed on the crude , crumbling basalt columns of the Palisades and remember from a kid learning it was identical to a wall on the northern coast of Africa.
Ahh first year lectures again! Love it! I’d forgotten the details. What’s new to me is the future predictions of the plates. Thanks again. (Sent a PayPal donation the other week - really appreciate all your work and time).
Thanks for watching and your kind donation.
Excellent review of 100 yearsof historic geology
Love today's lecture 👌 very interesting. Thank you
Yet another exciting episode of your Geology 101 series! Again, you have a captivating way of explaining complicated things. I can't thank you enough for doing this, Shawn :) When I was young, plate tectonics was somewhat "new", barely known to the general public and not taught at all in French schools before the 80s anyway. When I later found out about it, I was fascinated... Also, very interested in what you said about the magnetic signature of rocks, hope to dig further into this... And now on to Tectonics part 2! ;)
I look forward to more episodes. At college...a long time ago...I focused my science requirements on earth the sciences. I took intro to geology, physical geography, geomorphology, cartography, and urban geography. The latter one also involved history and social science. I had several field trips in the Arizona desert. My favorite was to an alluvial fan.
I watched this earlier on my TV cuz the monitor is bigger than my crappy little lap top. Love this series . 8-)
I'm so happy you're making these video's. Thank you so much 🙏
Just finished watching the Iceland Geology video and that was very interesting. Also congratulations on 109K.
This is great! I'm going to recommend this series to friends who are interested in geology. Just liked and subscribed with the first video.
I've loved the whole topic of geology since the age of 12 (blame Jules Verne lol) and yours is one of the best online series on TH-cam. Thank you for uploading, Professor. Your channel is one of the reasons I refer to TH-cam as my "free university".
Awesome, thank you! Welcome aboard.
Thanks again for the lesson. 2:2.
This was fantastic! Super fascinating. Thank you so much for teaching in such an easy to understand way. The illustrations are super helpful.
Thanks!
Excellent video. Have been following all your updates on Iceland and this (after episode #1) really starts to put everything into context.
I love your geologylessons! I Think I'm learning! 😅 At least I'm paying attention now - as a teen in school, not so much.. 🫣
Thank You Professor! Looking forward to 101 #2 part 2 !
Wishing you + fam. a nice weekend!
Greetings from Värmland Sweden
Thanks Prof Shawn for the lesson. I wondered what extra info could be found via the TH-cam links to your slides on continental movements and Earth's magnetic field - the 1st worked fine but the 2nd linked video no longer exists. You're welcome ;)
Great lesson!!! Thank you!!!
Another excellent class! I have recommended your videos to so many people.
Thanks for your support.
I once saw an animation of the western US being pulled apart and Nevada gets split into two with a new seaway up
and down in the center. Las Vegas will be a seaport on the Pacific Ocean about 15 to 20 million years from now! It
also showed a new coastal mountain range going up and down the western edge along the part that the LA to Portland
drifted area will be looking at to its east by then. Fascinating continetal drift stuff professor.
Thanks, Shawn. Inspiring, as always.
Thank you so much, Prof Willsey. I am super excited about your initiative to deliver lectures about important geology topics, in addition to the fieldwork videos you have been doing. I cannot thank you enough. Cheers. The lectures about the basics of geology are really helpful for people like myself. Thank you.
Thx for the great presentation, Shawn! 😎
Thank You!!🤗 You are such a fantastic teacher and make everything soo easy to understand and soo interesting!!👍 If I would have had You as my teacher in school I would definatley have become a geologist!! Glad to get to learn all this now !! Better late than never!! 🤗👍
You are so welcome! Thanks for your kind comments.
Great 101 class!!
Thank you for spreding knowledge! ❤❤❤ 😊
absolutly love your teaching thanks from Denmark :)
Thank you again! Catching up. Busy summer
This is soooo exciting
There's actually a documnetary series about what Australia will look like in that future. It's called Mad Max. ;)
Ha!
About 1960 I commented to my Geography teacher about the similarity of Western Africa to South America in my GCE O level course. He dismissed it as pure coincidence. He probably studied for his degree about 1930
Yes I did the same around the same time...and got the same answer!!😆
Thanks, I enjoyed that a lot. Lately there's been talk of New Zealand being part of a "new" continent or plate. I look forward to any input you share about that.
Thank you, I can't believe all the stuff I've forgotten over the years!
Although I didn't make it my career, Geology has always been my favorite subject and I was blessed to live in the Eastern Sierra for 16 years
What really blows my mind is how much time is involved here. Millions, billions of years? It's very hard to wrap my head around this. I am not a creationist, by the way & don't understand their claims at all.
It's simply amazing!
Excellent. Very interesting.
I am using this course. Reading a book on Krakatoa. A good part of the discussion thus far has been about plate tectonics. Not a dep dive but being able to use the vocabulary. 😎
Fascinating stuff!
Shawn, I always wonder if when the poles "flip" does it happen suddenly?
That was awesome. Thank you.
Thanks for the video Shawn.
I would have thought that you would have put the seafloor spreading earlier in the video for more of a chronological order of relevant discoveries where the bands of magnetic reversal in the sea floors that was discovered during WW II by the navies searching for submarines.
I once heard that California will one day go north to Alaska. Good program, thank you.
6:10 Surprised to see your animation has North America drifting northward over the next 50 million years. I thought that the general motion of (most of) North America currently is slightly south of due west, with NA having peaked in northerly latitude several millions of years ago.
I'd be very interested in seeing some of the lab components of your class. As a former lab technician, I'm actually more than interested.
Fascinating! Thanks.
There has been a series of earthquakes today going on along the Pacific and Antarctic ridge. It started with a 6.2 at 09:55:49 UTC.
I was a geology major at USC in the late 60’s; plate tectonics was just entering the text books and lectures.
Hey Shawn! Awesome presentation! Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge with us! I did have a question of sorts. When you presented plate movements in the future, I noticed it didn't account for things like the formation of the East African Rift and the splitting of Africa. Was the video you showed representing plate movements as they are as of today and they do not change directions from their current movements? Thank you!
@shawnwillsey Naive question about your comments about the climate changes when australia moves north or baja california goes north- I was under the impression that the placement of the continents also affects the oceanic and atmospheric currents. So as the plates keep moving the weather patterns worldwide might significantly change. Perhaps you might cover this aspect as you describe the plates in more detail.
In my experience, climatology and oceanography is not really discussed in an intro geology class. Could be that Shawn will make a mention of climate changes when he covers deep time in an example later, but this video may be all that is covered about climate in this class. Yet, AFAIK, there is no easy way to determine an expected climate by looking at land distribution on the planet.
@@TheDanEdwards Let's see what Shawn says. Geogirl had some videos covering how the ocean currents were affected. For example if there is no Atlantic ocean there is no gulf stream carrying warm waters to Europe...
At start of your lecture, you mention "in person lab". Do you drill holes down and create mini volcano in your lab so students get to scoop up some lava to dip it in a water-filled bucket and then analyze it? 🙂 Do you let lava flow in corridors so students can see the difference between A-Ah and Pahoehoe 🙂
BTW, did you ever watch the series "From the Earth to the Moon" ? One episode at end of series is dedicated to geologists teaching astronauts on what to look for on the moon.
Shawn, thanks so much for posting this content. I always wished that I taken a course in geology while in college, and now that I'm retired, I have time to enjoy your videos. What text do you use with your course?
Thank you!
I know one thing that's evidence of plate tectonics is that the mountains we have in the north of Scotland have been discovered to be the same range as the Appalachians!
Maybe beyond an= 101 course, but would be interested for your take on the work of Karin Sigloch tracking what happens to subducting plates as the go down.
That is a 400 level course! I assume you follow Nick Zentner?
Can we tell whether there’s convection within the mantle as a whole? Do we know for a fact that today it’s more like a layer of firm tofu-squishable but ultimately solid-than it is one of some extremely viscous fluid like pitch?
Thank you for these videos. Geology is one of the classes that I didn’t manage to take during college.
Thank you 🙏
What a great refresher!
Question: how do you measure the magnetic signature of rocks? I assume they need to stay in place during measuring. Or is it enough to precisely record the orientation of the rocks when still in situ?
It is a complicated process. First, they use a gasoline powered diamond tipped coring tool that is water cooled to drill down about 2 inches, then they use a Brunton or other compass to mark magnetic north on the sample and take it back to the lab to
test the strike and dip of the magnetism stored in the rock. There are video on TH-cam about the process.
@@johncooper4637 Thank you! So the strike and dip are measured in a lab. That does need careful documentation, but doable of course. I'll find some docu's about it and learn more.
I found the part about Wegener' s theory very interesting. Along with rest
Do you have any information on the newly discovered continent of Zealandia, part of which is the Islands of New Zealand?
Gdey Shawn great work mate. Love you work, but I've got a couple of questions about the model for continental drift 50 million years into the future. Firstly what happened to the East African Rift? There's been no change and secondly where did Tasmania go?
The animation is highly simplified and only shows broad trends.
Theoretically, how high could the Himalayas get before their height simply crushes and laterally fluidizes the lower rocks? Right now I calculate about 35,000 psi (didn't show my work) under Mount Everest.