One of my Honors students, Hope W. (author of yesterday's discussion of the Chalk Point Power Plant), kept a tally on Facebook of quips and phrases from this semester's Environmental Geology class. Now that the semester is over, I offer them to the public at large, despite the utter lack of context. Enjoy!


"Imagine how the lava feels."

"Earthlings are made of Earth."

"What do meteorologists study? Hint-- NOT meteors."

"It [the oceanic crust] is like a giant sheet of tissue paper."

[Referring to the continental crust, in comparison to the oceanic crust] "It's light and fluffy, like a souffle."

"We don't know the actual specifics."

"When you go up, you're not going North - you're going away from the Earth."

[Dramatizing the extraction of paleomagnetic data from rocks] "Continent, where was the pole for you 600 million years ago?"

"Oceanic crust is like James Dean and continental crust is like Dick Clark."

"Here's what we know about tectonic plates: some of them are big... some of them are itty-bitty."

"You can't forget Djibouti."

[Referring to the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes] "There was just no one west of that to report how much shaking there was. Or at least no one who spoke English and felt like talking."

"Take my word for it man! I'm a scientist... No, that's not how it works."

"I have a nice layer of peanut butter on my arm."

"The same thing happens with rocks... it just takes longer."

"As continents move along they pick up junk."

"L.A. will end up in the armpit of Alaska."

[Referring to Redoubt] "Drama-queen of a volcano."

[Comparing geologic hazards] "If you use up all your water, then you die and you don't have to experience the earthquake."

"If bamboo collapses and falls on you it doesn't hurt anywhere near as much as brick."

Let me know in the comments if any of these requires an explanation...

Labels: analogies, humor, nova, teaching