Thursday, April 5, 2012

Lab #8 Fall Line

Fall Zone

The Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, or Fall Zone, is a 900-mile (1,400 km) escarpment where the Piedmont and Atlantic Coastal Plain meet in the eastern United States. Much of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line passes through areas where there is no evidence of faulting.
Macon is one of Georgia's three Fall Line Cities, along with Augusta and Columbus. The Fall Line is where the hilly lands of the Piedmont plateau meet the flat terrain of the coastal plain. Macon has a varied landscape of rolling hills on the north side and flat plains on the south. The fall line causes rivers in the area to decline rapidly toward sea level. In the past, Macon and other Fall Line cities had many textile mills powered by the rivers. The Ocmulgee River is the major river that runs through Macon.
Examples of the Fall Zone include the Potomac River's Great Falls



Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Lab #7 Baconsfield Park

In 1911 United States Senator Augustus O. Bacon executed a will that devised to the Mayor and Council of the City of Macon, Georgia, a tract of land which, after the death of the Senator's wife and daughters, was to be used



 The will provided that the park should be under the control of a Board of Managers of seven persons, all of whom were to be white. The city kept the park segregated for some years but in time took the position that the park was a public facility which it could not constitutionally manage and maintain on a segregated basis.

The city of Macon gave up their role as trustee and appointed three new trustees and the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed, holding that Senator Bacon had the right to give and bequeath his property to a limited class, that charitable trusts are subject to supervision of a court of equity, and that the power to appoint new trustees so that the purpose of the trust would not fail was clear.  The case is here on a writ of certiorari.

U.S. Supreme Court

EVANS v. NEWTON, 382 U.S. 296 (1966)

382 U.S. 296 EVANS ET AL. v. NEWTON ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA.
No. 61.
Argued November 9-10, 1965.
Decided January 17, 1966. 
 
 
Result:

Under the circumstances of this case, we cannot but conclude that the public character of this park requires that it be treated as a public institution subject to the command of the Fourteenth Amendment (granted equal protection of the laws), regardless of who now has title under state law. We may fairly assume that had the Georgia courts been of the view that even in private hands the park may not be operated for the public on a segregated basis, the resignation would not have been approved and private trustees appointed. We put the matter that way because on this record we cannot say that the transfer of title per se disentangled the park from segregation under the municipal regime that long controlled it.
Since the judgment below gives effect to that purpose, it must be and is

Reversed. 

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Lab #6: Munsell Color System, Community Gardens and Soil Testing

Munsell Color System:
The Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions: hue, value (lightness), and chroma (color purity). It was created by Professor Albert H. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century and adopted by the USDA as the official color system for soil research in the 1930s.

How to use the Munsell color chart:

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

MegaFlood Lab #5

Glacial Lake Missoula Video!:
Eratics: Boulders scattered around the Scabland that do not match the rock types found in those areas.
Glaciers move down from Canada scraping and reforming the landforms.
Hanging Valleys: glaciers enter valleys and enlarge them.
Problem: Glaciers didn't reach Scabland!
Then ripples were discovered.
J Harlen Bretz challenged the view that most landforms had formed over long periods of time by saying a megaflood changed the landscape nearly over night. 900 ft deep..a body of water raging through the scabland making its way to the pacific. People dismissed his theory.
Where did the water come from?!
JT Pardee
Missoula Montana. Epic confrontation between water and ice.
Scratches on rock show glacial migration.
Glacier created a lake by damming a river.
Glacial Lake Missoula.  250 miles away.
Joesph T. Pardee- knew about the lake. But had no proof of where it had gone.
He found ripples that indicated a movement of the huge body of water that pointed towards the scablands.
What caused the lake to empty?
Proof found on Iceland. Matthew Roberts work..ice dams.
1996 huge body of water flowed through southern Iceland.
At the base of the ice dam the pressure of the area prevents ice from freezing/expanding. Super cooled ice.
Super cooled water trickles through the cracks in the ice which creates friction that releases heat.
The water moves through the glaciers and melts the ice.

Responsible for the collapse of the ice dam at Glacial Lake Missoula
2.5 Trillion tons of water surging across American northwest.
The pressure of the water in the tunneled ice dam becomes too much and it collapses creating a hole that water pours out of.
Dry Falls. How could water create that!? It's normally carved out by glaciers.
And potholes? How did water create that?
Scale independent. They did a model experiment and it looks just like the real ones!
Massive amounts of water can carve out these craters and make it look like years of erosion.
What about the potholes?
The put a hard object in a flow of water and turned the speed of the water up.
Bubble streams. The bubbles collapse against the object creating a sledgehammer effect.
So can bubbles gouge holes in solid rocks like those in the scabland?!
YES!
Underwater vortex/tornado of bubbles carving out rocks.
Boulders were flung everywhere.
1980, Bretz got Penrose Medal!
There may have been more than one gigantic flood!
Big canyon with many layered deposits shows ash from Mt. St. Helen.
Ash fell into water and drifted into layer? Not likely for this amazing clear line.
This suggests that there may have been many gigantic floods!
Dating the sediment takes time.
The top and bottom layers are 20,000 years apart!
:o!
Floods were regular on the scablands during the Ice Age!



Scablands

Scablands (along Highway 90)



Tuesday, February 14, 2012

My Igneous Rock! Lab #4

Diorite

  • intermediate composition between felsic and mafic
  • classically a salt and pepper rock
  • white to light gray plagioclase and black hornblende
  • some diorites contain biotite as well as hornblende, and some contain up to 10% quartz
  • If you have more than 10% quartz, you probably have a granite on your hands. If you clearly have abundant K-feldspar, you probably have a granite on your hands. 
  • Diorite occurs in small bodies such as sills, dikes, stocks, or as more irregular masses associated with gabbro and batholiths of granodiorite and granite.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Lab #3, My Minerals

Gypsum is found in nature in mineral and rock form. As a mineral, it can form very pretty, and sometimes extremely large, crystals.
Pumice is a type of extrusive volcanic rock, produced when lava with a very high content of water and gases is extruded from a volcano
Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz
Galena, highly reflective and commonly in cubes.
Halite is the native salt, occurring in massive, granular, compact, or cubic-crystalline forms.
Feldspar, found in abundance on Earth's crust.
   
Amphibole, a variety of hornblende from Faraday Township, Ontario, Canada.
Specimen is approximately 3 inches across.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Lab #2, Maps

Proportional Symbol Map

Dot Density Map

Isarithmic Map

Choropleth Map

My Isarithmic Map