normalized to survive into every planet except an article over and over
and overall in the world have i
scenes such a variety of it sedimentary anamorphic large parcels balls
complex landscapes to interpret
such a variety as anywhere else in the world in a single day
so you just go down the road and you meant to a new world
i'm leon long
and i'm a repressive geology at the university of texas at austin
i came to u t
in nineteen sixty two
so you do the math i'd around for awhile
a former research i use the occurrence are very tiny amounts of naturally occurring redirected
we have the breakdown of nuclei of atoms and the adam that's there to begin
with a scroll the parent adam
a some type of a particle comes out of the nucleus and the a random
the remains after that event called radioactive decay of that is called the dollar right
so as geologic time goes on the amount of daughter is increasing the amount of
remaining paradise decreasing this balance between the water and parent is the basis of the
geologic law
and so using radioactivity we can't eight inch and if that's and we're talking now
millions and billions of years ago you're going back four point five billion years for
example so i art
i feel so fortunate to be located in austin texas because it just so happens
that taxes is comprised that i have for those and
large areas are called in geologic provinces
austin is right on the boundary between two would be is
and there is a third geologic province that's
about an hour's drive away and so there was a lot of variety
within easy access i teach introductory courses
beginning geology
this particular porous the time on at the moment is a an intruder introductory field
course
and it's rather unusual
it's for students who were not majoring in geology there are majoring in just everything
else
many of them are intended to become teachers
here we are it make any false they are this is one of our projects
and i think you can see
one of the falls and the background
you're looking at onion great
the falls are coming over image of limestone
next and with the limestone or layers of volcanic rock because
eighty million years ago there was a pretty good pretty good okay over there are
just about a mile away from us
and the volcanic rock is this is this brings up right here
as you can see that all the lines so there's more of a
tan to buff coloured
the kind of gear that we used in the field course is really extremely simple
you got the have a backpack the whole your stuff
you have a special compass call they brought to encompass which is specially designed for
geologist expensive than most campuses you have your base which would be of topographic map
we may have a geology timbre the chip on a rocky of it if we
want together a piece of but
we have a hand lens
this one hand lens looks like
we have aerial photographs
we have a piece of plastic over the photograph which enables us to draw aligns
with our pencils workaround of the field
and we make a geologic map
and a geologic map is a representation of the different kinds of geologic formations and
see not the surface of the year
we have some nice projects the right in austin of nicotine false state park right
at the edge of this afternoon we're going to go to muppet now which of
a lot however we're going to go to a saw functional three where we have
to interpret of them looking at
we can go here and there are within that out then we really a dollar
we go typically west of here there was a large area
whereas the wasp and that's called alana uplift and its full of ignorance of arts
and that were very large and a lot of sedimentary rocks as well as more
ancient h that we have here
and so by just driving around we see all this improbable variety
one thing that they may be doing we have what they burn in the scores
is to teach some geology to their students someday
but even if they don't do that even if they end up and some other
profession what we learn is just an m x amount of things about the earth
not only to understand it but
it is my contention that if you understand the your if you appreciate of more
it's actually it's actually more beautiful to you because you understand how about you that
way
we are having a lot of slot