Science Seminar, presented by the Math, Science, and Engineering Division, Annandale Campus and also supported by Lyceum

"The Scientific Basis of Music"
Herbert A. Smith, Director Jazz Studies, Northern Virginia Community College.
Friday, November 20, 2009, CE Forum, 12 noon - 1pm

This presentation will focus on music and its essential relationship to science. It will explore areas, aspects and elements of music that most reasonably could be termed the science of music. The talk will also illuminate unique principles, concepts and procedures shared within the sciences as well as music. It will highlight the benefits of music study and practice in the intellectual and philosophical development of the educated and enlightened individual.

Professor Smith has taught at NOVA since 1976 and has performed with notable local and internationally known jazz musicians throughout his long career in music. He has taught a variety of courses including Jazz Improvisation, History of Music, Music Theory, Composition and Music Appreciation. Before he joined the faculty at NOVA he taught at Howard University and Southern Illinois University, hosted two radio jazz shows and was in the US Air Force band for three years. Herb Smith has a passionate interest in history, politics, economics, philosophy and the study of world cultures.

All students, staff, and faculty are cordially invited.

Labels: meetings, music, nova

Galena (PbS) makes a brief appearance in the trailer for James Cameron's new movie Avatar:

That metallic luster, that cubic cleavage, that high-specific-gravity heft... It couldn't be anything else. Apparently it's more valuable in the future that it is today. I wonder if the future humans want it for the sulfur or the lead? Watch the full trailer here.

Labels: minerals, movies

That's a slab of the Shawangunk Formation conglomerate, from eastern Pennsylvania. I collected it a couple of years ago when I drove up to go fossil hunting at the Whaleback, but it wasn't until last year that I slabbed and polished it. (The slab measures 10 cm wide by 27 cm in length.) Then a couple of months to get around to scanning it, and finally a few months more before posting it. Sheesh.

It's a lovely quartz-rich clast-supported conglomerate, a ridge former in the Valley & Ridge province of the Appalachians. Like the Massanutten Formation, it's Silurian in age, and thought to be part of the "molasse" sequence shed off the Taconian mountain belt, first raised during the late Ordovician. It is interpreted as a relatively-high-energy fluvial system deposit; sediments laid down by rivers as the mountains next door were weathered and eroded.

Labels: appalachians, pennsylvania, quartz, sediment, silurian, valley and ridge, weathering

If you don't read Tree Lobsters already, you should. Today's episode seemed particularly on-target.

Labels: art, humor, pseudoscience, science and society

On our Historical Geology field trip to Washington, DC, this weekend, we were down at Chain Bridge Flats and saw some fresh flood mud deposited by the flooding Potomac. It was a gelatinous goo, like pudding, but had some lovely dessication cracks developing. Here are a couple of photos, courtesy of student Ana C., with a penny for scale in each:

Labels: primary structures, rivers, sediment

Labels: art, humor, mining

Here's an image of my new countertop, inaccurately described by the realtor as "granite":


It's not felsic, so it can't really be granite, but I'm cool with that. This is the countertop of my kitchen "island" in the new condominium that I spent the past week moving into. For the first time in my life, I'm a homeowner...

...Whoa*.

That's why it's been so quiet around here recently. But... got the internet hooked up today, so I should be back to geoblogging regularly soon.
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* You'll recall that buying a home was one of my resolutions for this year.

Labels: dc, granite, igneous