Powerful analogies
Hey geobloggers,
What are some of your favorite analogies for explaining geological concepts to other people?
I'd like to share a few of mine, but I'll wait a couple days so other folks have a chance to chime in. Let's make this something between a meme and an accretionary wedge... I'll set the "deadline" as 48 hours from now... Thursday afternoon, east coast time. (But of course, it wouldn't really matter if you were "late"...)
Maybe publish a post and then link to it in the comments section here?
C
What are some of your favorite analogies for explaining geological concepts to other people?
I'd like to share a few of mine, but I'll wait a couple days so other folks have a chance to chime in. Let's make this something between a meme and an accretionary wedge... I'll set the "deadline" as 48 hours from now... Thursday afternoon, east coast time. (But of course, it wouldn't really matter if you were "late"...)
Maybe publish a post and then link to it in the comments section here?
C
9 Comments:
oooh ... that is a good one, I may not have one done in time, but I'll put together a post anyway
Let's see, there's the layer-cake thing, then you can cut it up with a knife and move the pieces around. Sometimes decks of cards? But usually only for geologists. Hmm...
Does a slinky count as an analogy? It's more of a model. But I like slinkies - or really long metal springs, for classroom demos. People learn better if the demo covers the entire room.
I reckon slinkies are more models or demos than analogies... but if you want to discuss slinkies, go for it. I won't stop you, especially because on Tuesday I got all my Physical Geology students up and crowded around a slinky on the floor as we demonstrated P and S waves. Go for it!
Here are a few things I came up with in between cursing at ArcGIS this morning. (I like the slinky thing too - we did that for last year's Earth Science Week demo at the Maryland Science Center.)
Ping!
Hypocentre's got a good one, too.
Here is my 2 cents. Looking over the comments, I think you'd classify most of my examples as models. Fair enough.
Just: Ping...
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