Sometimes, leafing through old books yields little gems.
The hydraulic processes of groundwater in nature cause great difficulties for calculations. To date, the geologist usually tends to rely on imagination [impression? understanding? concept? How the hell do you translate „Anschauung“?] only, and to disregard calculations completely. The mathematically trained engineer, on the other hand, often lacks the necessary understanding [imagination? etc.] of geologic structure. Especially in this field of groundwater science, progress can only be made by close collaboration of the geologist and the mathematically trained engineer.
W. Koehne (1928): Grundwasserkunde [Groundwater Science]. Schweizerbart, Stuttgart. p. 116–117.
Quite flattering how he denies geologists any mathematical skill. Hopefully this has improved since then. I, however, am a mathematically trained engineer who only needs to be acquainted with the understanding of geologic structure. 
I wish all my readers a happy new year!
Fireworks in Obermaiselstein, view from Oberdorf chapel
Dominion on her/his blog “The Couloir Times” has shown a part of the Blue Ridge Mountains where she/he grew up as WoGE #177.
Just in time before Christmas, I’d like to present the new snowy/icy WoGE #178:
A snowy place as WoGE for Christmas season.
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I made this reminder “sticky” so it stays on top for a while. For new articles, just scroll down a little bit.
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This month’s Accretionary Wedge (hosted by Magma Cum Laude) is about earth science outreach, so I’d like to write a bit about the practical courses our university (BTU – Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus) provides for secondary school students in 11th and 12th grade.
Our department (Environmental Geology) offers such practicals since 2007, but other departments have started earlier. Students of the secondary schools “Max-Steenbeck-Gymnasium” here in Cottbus and Carl-Friedrich-Gauß-Gymnasium in Frankfurt (Oder) attend practicals here as part of the “Forschungs-Bildungs-Kooperation” programme (FBK). Sorry, the schools’ and FBK’s websites are in German only.
Both schools have a special focus on mathematics, natural science and technology, and the students choose a practical course topic according to their elected “Leistungskurse” (intensive courses). In our case, these were either biology or chemistry. Sadly, geography intensive courses are not part of the FBK programme.
Up to now, we had three groups and topics:
- Physical properties of highly concentrated solutions of various salts (Gauß Gymnasium)
- Water quality of a small ditch flowing through a fen (Steenbeck Gymnasium)
- Release of nutrients from strongly degraded peat soils (Steenbeck Gymnasium)
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The new geoblog survey is online this month. This aims at getting a better picture of the geoblogosphere, and to find out what’s good, what’s bad, what’s missing.
However, participitation has been low yet. So if you own a geoscience-oriented blog, take this short survey!
The survey is open until 1st November.
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David of Cryolgy and Co. has pulled us firmly into the Quaternary with the climate sequence from the Lac du Bouchet (some additional info about is in David’s follow-up post).
Here’s my new WoGE picture. I hope to attract some new players (or reactivate the old ones), so I choose something not too difficult.
Where on Google Earth #174. The keyword is “hole”.
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Again, Péter’s WoGE took quite some time to solve. (Or was just nobody interested?) He also suggested another twist to the game: the location should be connected to the previous one by some common concept, or “keyword”. His keyword was “type locality” – of komatiite, as it turned out. This prevented some of my nastier ideas and I settled for something nice and easy, I hope:
Where on Google Earth #172. The keyword is “Magnesium”
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My geological data collection on the Nachterstedt landslide received some response, at least in the German-speaking part of the net. (Thanks to Gunnar and Lutz!) Also, I find my articles quite close to the top of Google searches on “Geologie Nachterstedt” (German) and “geology Nachterstedt”. The high rank in the English search is a bit strange, as I have not written in English about it yet… Anyway, I realised that more people do visit my blog.
To help my new guests in browsing around the site, I’ve installed a little plugin, Must Read Posts (adapted according to the hints in the comments there). Below the heading “recommended posts” you’ll find a random sample from those articles that I believe are rather well done.
I’ve stumbled across this nice piece of modern, abstract art:
Modern art.
A purple woman with violet hair, holding a large fish in front of her body? Offer your explanations and interpretations!
