This is from an e-mail I just got from Dr. Robert Templin, the President of Northern Virginia Community College, in reference to my colleague Ken Rasmussen: Dear Colleague, I am very pleased to share with you the news that Dr. Kenneth Rasmussen, Professor of Geology at the Annandale Campus, is a recipient of the Virginia … Read more
Just got this in an email: “Hi professor Bentley, This is [redacted], I had you for Geology last Spring. I just wanted to email you to first off, thank you, and second off, to ask some questions. Before I took your class Science was my worst subject , and I did everything to avoid taking … Read more
This series of cartoon images ended up on the board yesterday in Historical Geology lab… E = erosion D = deposition Yes, oversimplified: I didn’t include the newest thinking about the subtleties involved in putting together the Brahma and Vishnu Schists and Zoroaster Granite, and I didn’t include mention of faulting (either ancient or more … Read more
Just to share the autumn color wonder that the east coast can be… here’s a shot of our “lake” on campus from the week before last.
Mountain Beltway reader Greg Willis attended my colleague Ken Rasmussen’s Triassic Rift Valley field course last weekend, and sent me this photo of the view inside the Luck Stone diabase quarry in Centreville, Virginia: Here’s an annotated version: Both photos are enlargeable by clicking on them (twice). This quarry chews into rock right along the … Read more
I spent last Thursday on a long field trip in the Valley and Ridge province of northernwestern Virginia. Leading the trip was Dan Doctor of the USGS-Reston. Accompanying Dan was a UVA environmental science student named Nathan. And the NOVA crew rounded it out: professor Ken Rasmussen from the Annandale campus, associate professor Victor Zabielski … Read more
…. And on the other side, we have secondary (tectonic) structures, focused on folds and faults:
One of the things I managed this week was to fill up a new display case in our Student Study area with a structural geology display. On one side is primary structures, both igneous and sedimentary….
It’s a rough life, working in the places I have to work… here are a few photos from yesterday’s field trip on the Billy Goat Trail with my NOVA Physical Geology students. Photos are courtesy Dr. Meg Coleman, who joined us for the hike. A post-lunch lecture on river incision (note the two prominent bedrock … Read more
This month’s Accretionary Wedge is being hosted by Ed over at Geology Happens. Ed asks the rest of us a simple question, “What are you working on now?” Gosh, where to start? It’s a busy time for me, but then again, it almost always is. I spent last week immersed in the NE/SE GSA section … Read more
Today, a few photos of my spring Environmental Geology class doing a New Orleans Case Study lab using our lovely Emriver river process simulator: That’s it. I mainly shot these photos for Steve Gough, as NOVA is participating in the new grant he submitted to NSF, but I figured I would share them here, too. … Read more
For those of you who are potential NOVA students (really, that’s pretty much anyone on the planet), I wanted to let you know that applications are now open for the July 2010 Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rockies course that I co-teach with Pete Berquist of Thomas Nelson Community College. A more detailed description … Read more
Mountain Beltway is the new home for Callan Bentley’s geoblogging. NOVA Geoblog will soon be closed, but will be left untouched. Like a fossil, it will be static but present, an artifact from an earlier time. It is hoped that the thousand-plus posts accumulated there will continue to be useful to the Internet-surfing public.