The Butter Buster
This semester, I employed a new tool in teaching structural geology. Built by NOVA's uber-clever engineering guru Rob Woodke, this is the Butter Buster. The idea came from Structural Geology of Rocks and Regions by Davis & Reynolds, the text I use for teaching structure, and was recommended as a crowd pleaser by Aaron Martin, the structural geologist at the University of Maryland.
So what's the deal? The deal is that materials like rocks behave differently if they are cold or if they are warm. (They also behave differently if they are under high or low pressure, and if strain is applied quickly or slowly, etc., but here our independent variable was temperature).
We can demonstrate this difference by creating an analogy between rocks and a more familar substance, butter. The butter buster creates a fault/shear zone of adjustable width, and displaces the two ends of the butter in opposite directions. If it's cold, it breaks. If it's warm, it flows. Ta-da!
Check it out...
Cold:
Room temperature:
Warm:
So what's the deal? The deal is that materials like rocks behave differently if they are cold or if they are warm. (They also behave differently if they are under high or low pressure, and if strain is applied quickly or slowly, etc., but here our independent variable was temperature).
We can demonstrate this difference by creating an analogy between rocks and a more familar substance, butter. The butter buster creates a fault/shear zone of adjustable width, and displaces the two ends of the butter in opposite directions. If it's cold, it breaks. If it's warm, it flows. Ta-da!
Check it out...
Cold:
Room temperature:
Warm:
3 Comments:
Very cool.
Have you ever seen the rheology experiments that Arlo Weil does with Charleston Chews? It's amazing - he takes a food demonstration and makes it a quantitative exploration of rheology. (It's on the Teaching Structural Geology page at SERC, I think.)
I had not checked that out. Thanks Kim! Very nice, indeed.
I hope this butter was then used for something awesome ... like a pound cake.
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