Don't Panic Geocast

By John Leeman and Shannon DulinScience Technology Education Natural Sciences

Don't Panic Geocast episodes

February 19, 2016Episode 56 - "A lot people would like to think they've got a lunar meteorite" Brad Jolliff
This week a special guest takes us to the moon by talking about lunar rocks and meteorites! The moon turns out to be a fascinating place, but probably won’t break up like in Seveneves.
Brad’s Website
Jim Papike
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC)
Mars Exploration Rovers
Apollo Lunar Rocks and Soils Collection
Impact Basin Geology
South Pole-Aitken Basin
Yutu Rover
Electron Microprobe
Armalcolite (mineral)
IDL
ENVI Software
ISIS Software
ArcGIS
ACT Zoomable Lunar Map
Fun Paper Friday
“Age Rules” from PSRD
Borg, L. E., Gaffney, A. M., and Shearer, C. K. (2015) A Review of Lunar Chronology Revealing a Preponderance of 4.34–4.37 Ga Ages, Meteoritics & Planetary Science, v. 50, p. 715–732, doi: 10.1111/maps.12373.
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
51 min
February 12, 2016Episode 55 - "Every time you clip your fingernails" Plate Tectonics
Why do mountains form, earthquakes happen, and volcanoes form where they do? The answer is plate tectonics. This week we explore the history of being wrong about how the Earth works.
Shannon’s Keyboard
Plate Tectonics
Tectonics is from the Greek tekton or “builder”
Ben Franklin’s Letter
Alfred Wegener
The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Book by Wegener)
Mesosaurus
Arthur Holmes (1928)
NOAA Seafloor Spreading Activity
Seafloor spreading proposed by Hess and Dietz
B.O.B and NDGT rap battle about the shape of the Earth
John Tuzo Wilson
Mantle Convection
Slab Pull
Chain demonstration
Plate Boundaries
Divergent
Convergent
Transform
Lava lakes as analogs
Fun Paper Friday
How does cement harden? Does it turn into a continuous material or is it still a bunch of grains stuck together? Find out with this week’s Fun Paper Friday!
MIT News Story on Research
Ioannidou, K., Krakowiak, K. J., Bauchy, M., Hoover, C. G., Masoero, E., Yip, S., et al. (2016). Mesoscale texture of cement hydrates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201520487–6. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1520487113
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
55 min
February 05, 2016Episode 54 - "We use statistics"
We’ve already talked a little bit about the Earth’s magnetic field, but where does that fall in terms of geoscience? Lots of physicists look at the magnetic field, but so do geologists. Not just our current field, but the ancient magnetic field, which is called paleomagnetism.
Paleomagnetism
Continental Position Video
Butler’s Pmag Webpage
Apparent Polar Wander
True Polar Wander
Magnetism in rocks - Dunlop
Authigenic Mineralization
Pmag Chainsaw Drill
PmagPy (Python Software)
Super IAPD
Zijderveld, 1964
Mu Metal
Magnetic Field Shielded Room
SQUID Magnetometer
Fun Paper Friday
What can chopsticks tell us about earthquakes? Find out by reading this week’s fun paper!
Tsai, S.-T., Wang, L.-M., Huang, P., Yang, Z., Chang, C.-D., & Hong, T.-M. (2016). Acoustic Emission from Breaking a Bamboo Chopstick. Physical Review Letters, 116(3), 035501–5. http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.035501
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
50 min
January 29, 2016Episode 53 - "They call it the snowtron"
With the first winter storm of 2016 over with, we figured we would jump on the bandwagon and talk about some different types of winter precipitation.
Feedback
Bending Spacetime in the Basement (Thanks Mark!)
Cavendish Experiment
Winter Precipitation
Snowtron
John’s Drone Experiments
Pickle Juice and Cheese brine!
Atmospheric Temperature Profiles
Freezing Rain
Freezing Fog
Sleet
Ice Storms
Types of Frost
Hail
John’s Article “Highway to Hail"
Graupel
Inupiat Dictionary - Turn to page 104 in the pdf and you can see all the different words for snow!
Many Snow Crystals!
Snow Rollers (lots of photos!)
NWS Warnings and Watches - Definitions
Fun Paper Friday
This week we use seismology to find… a burglar?
Hinzen, K. G., Reamer, S. K., & Fleischer, C. (2016). Analysis of a Burglargram. Seismological Research Letters, 87(1), 193–195. http://doi.org/10.1785/0220150253
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
51 min
January 22, 2016Episode 52 - "You pay for significant digits"
Last week we talked about glaciers, a basic staple of any geology education. That means it’s only fair to talk about a geophysics staple this week. We can measure gravity at different locations and use it to help figure out what’s under our feet. That and another great Fun Paper this week!
It’s All About Pentiums (Weird Al)
Gravity Basics
All geophysical methods are based on measuring some kind of physical property difference.
Gravity is sensitive to the density of the material below the measurement.
“Big G"
gal (unit)
Density for any rock varies widely.
Gravity from impact structures
Measuring gravity
Absolute gravimeter
Relative gravimeter
Zero-Length Springs
Differential GPS
Corrections
Examples of the more common corrections
Eötvös effect
John’s explanation of Coriolis Force and Toilets
Isostasy
Bouguer Anomaly
FORTRAN Talwani Example
Original Talwani Paper
Fun Paper Friday
Alarcón, Héctor, et al. “Self-Amplification of Solid Friction in Interleaved Assemblies.” Physical Review Letters 116.1 (2016): 015502.
Semis pulling on phone books
Mythbusters
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
1 hr 12 min
January 15, 2016Episode 51 - "Regelation. I think I had that for lunch the other day" Glaciers
Last known survivor of the 1906 San Fran. EQ/Fire passes away
Ice is a mineral
National Snow and Ice Data Center
Great USGS informational publication on ice ages
Mendenhall Glacier
Video of 1 year of Mendenhall melting
Chasing Ice
Firn
Pressure melting point
Regelation
Video of Regelation Experiment
Weertman 1957 (Paper on ice movement)
Great Lakes
Glacial erratic
Ice age
Drumlin
Esker
Moraine
Kettle Lakes
Subglacial channels
Glacial striation
Fun Paper Friday
This week we learn about low frequency sound waves in the atmosphere and how we can use them to determine the winds at high altitudes and improve numerical weather prediction.
EOS Article
Arrowsmith, Stephen J., Omar Marcillo, and Douglas P. Drob. “A framework for estimating stratospheric wind speeds from unknown sources and application to the 2010 December 25 bolide.” Geophysical Journal International 195.1 (2013): 491–503.
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
1 hr 9 min
January 08, 2016Episode 50 - "Some serious geometric voodoo" Projections Part 2
Last week we told you about many different map projections and talked about why they are all wrong. This week we’ll discuss a few of our favorites, why we like them, and when they fail us. We also have another Star Wars themed Fun Paper Friday!
How’s your 2016 so far? (PhD Comics)
Nuclear Test
John’s Particle Motion Movie
How To Detect A Secret Nuclear Test
Picking a Projection
Consider what you need
For dot density plots, equal area is important
Mercator projection
Gnomonic projection
Great circle distance
Great circle
Our Favorites
Compare landmasses to Africa.
Mercator puzzle
Wikipedia lists over 60 different projections!
Strangest: Hammer retroazimuthal projection or Waterman Butterfly Projection
Most boring/overused: Mercator Projection or Web Mercator
Pleasing whole-world: Robinson , Winkel tripel projection, or Armadillo
Polar Regions: Stereographic Projection or Pierce Quincuncial Projection
Fun Paper Friday
Feinstein, Zachary. “It’s a Trap: Emperor Palpatine’s Poison Pill.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.09054 (2015).
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
54 min
January 01, 2016Episode 49 - "Would it blow your mind if I told you Africa is 14x larger than Greenland?"
Maps are useful things, but it turns out that projecting a 3D object on a 2D map can cause a lot of unexpected problems. They even inspired an XKCD comic. This week we explore maps and map projections. We also chat about machine learning as part of #FunPaperFriday.
What’s the big problem?
The Earth is a sphere, actually it’s an ellipsoid, actually it’s really bumpy and messy
Taking 3D information and pushing in onto a 2D medium means that you must sacrifice something, you are losing a dimension with which you can express information.
Projections are a well thought out as researched problem, even in pure mathematics.
You have to pick a projection that will tell you want you need to know accurately, and know that you lose some other information.
There is even a West Wing clip about this
A few examples of projection problems
There are geographical properties that we care about: area, shape, direction, conformality, distance, scale… and you can’t get them all at once. In fact, some it’s hard to get more than approximately the right answer.
Area: Maps that preserve area relationships between things on the globe are called equal area maps.
Distance: Some maps (equidistant maps) show an accurate distance from the center of the projection to all points.
Scale: The same scaling relation applied across the map will give accurate values for scale relations on the globe.
Conformality: Scale in any direction at any point is identical. This means that parallels and meridians are at right angles. (Local shape preserved)
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/mapproj_f.html
A few projections
Projections can be generally classified as cylindrical, conic, azimuthal, or other. These are as you would think, projections onto cylinders, cones, planes, or with rules of “rectangular meridians” or something else. There are lots of sub-classes, you can view them here.
Wikipedia lists over 60 different projections!
Fun Paper Friday
That’s what she said. Can we teach computers to better understand human speech patterns? This paper takes a humorous problem as a test case.
Kiddon, C., & Brun, Y. (2011). That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification (pp. 89–94). Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
46 min
December 25, 2015Episode 48 - "You know you're going to be inspired" AGU
We want to wish you happy holidays and invite you to join us while John was at AGU. This show should have been released a week ago, but John got very ill at AGU and took several days to recover. Thank you for the well wishes and sticking with us!
AGU Fall Meeting
5 Tips for Surviving your First Conference
John didn’t get to see the Elon Musk lecture.
He did get to sit in a car from Tesla Motors though.
ObsPy
Orbital Mechanics - Check them out!
Fun Paper Friday
Can plants remember and learn? The answer may surprise you, it did us!
National Geographic Article
Gagliano, Monica, et al. “Experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in environments where it matters.” Oecologia 175.1 (2014): 63–72.
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
43 min
December 11, 2015Episode 47 - "That's nerd points" Holiday Gift Guide
The holiday season is approaching and you may be wondering what to get that geoscientist or science nerd in your life. Look no further as we discuss our recommendations on the Don’t Panic gift guide!
John’s Picks
Gear
Pedco UltraPod II
AmScope SE400-Z Microscope
Shower Mate Speaker
MakerBeam
Lowepro Extreme Padded Sport Backpack
Books
Thing Explainer
What If?
The Annotate Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory, checkout author interview here
Seveneves
The Three-Body Problem
Misc
Geology Bed Sheets
Audible Membership
Dropbox Membership
Soft Earth Pottery
Geology Tricorder
Shannon’s Picks
Gear
Garmin Monterra GPS
Plateau Designs Field Pouch
Rite in the Rain pouch and books
UV/LED handlens
Books and Movies
Annals of a Former World
Storm Kings
Hyperbole and a half
Jurassic World!
DamNation
Misc
REI
Chacos!
Patagonia Messenger Bag
Nikon AW110
Field Notes - snowblind!
Fun Paper Friday
Star Wars! Need we say more? Learn about Dunes and Tatooine with this week’s fun paper!
Dunes on planet Tatooine: Observation of barchan migration at the Star Wars film set in Tunisia Lorenz, Ralph D., et al. “Dunes on planet Tatooine: Observation of barchan migration at the Star Wars film set in Tunisia.” Geomorphology 201 (2013): 264–271.
Contact us:
Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - [email protected]
John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman
Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin
1 hr 1 min

About Don't Panic Geocast

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John Leeman and Shannon Dulin discuss geoscience and technology weekly for your enjoyment! Features include guests, fun paper Friday selections, product reviews, and banter about recent developments.…