Last summer, my parents visited a lot of national parks, including Badlands National Park in South Dakota. They showed me all the fossils they saw, which were really cool, but they also showed me photos of the iconic red banding in some of the rock formations there. These bands are part of the Brule Formation, […]
Author: teg14004
Density Differences in the Flume
A few weeks ago, we went down to the lab and played with the flume to simulate a hyperpycnal flow. This was cool on its own to watch, but I was struck by the how some of the water we poured in sat in one of the basins. When the water was originally added, it […]
Mud and… Elephants, Apparently
The other day I came across an article about a herd of elephants stuck in a mud hole in Cambodia. They were all rescued, thankfully. I didn’t save the article, though, and when I went to search for it again, I discovered something: there are a lot of news stories about elephants getting stuck in the mud. There’s […]
Major Types of Dunes: Where and How They Form
By: Madeline Kollegger and Taylore Grunert Parabolic Parabolic dunes – also called U-shaped, blowout, or hairpin dunes – tend to form where vegetation covers the sand. Winds may erode a section, pushing the sediment leeward. The vegetation will hold back the arms of the dune, so that the dune points in the leeward direction. The […]
Cross Bedding in the Flume
I was surprised to notice that, while we were playing with the flume, cross bedding had formed. The first layer of bedding was already there at the start of the lab. The next two layers formed once we changed the velocity of flow, causing the water levels to sink and rise. I thought it […]