Don't Panic Geocast

Tides pull and deform the surface of the ocean and the surface of the Earth. This week we’ll take a quick tour of tidal forces, address some show feedback, and then talk about a revision on a classic physics problem. Tides Tides are a result of gravitational interaction of the Sun-Earth-Moon system, but are of course a factor on many other planets as well. Gravity is the key to remember and that it varies linearly with mass, but with the inverse square of displacement. Ocean Tides The most familiar example is ocean tides. These are important for commerce, safety, and for sedimentary processes. Sedimentary layers called tidal rythmites Cool tide visualization from Calculated Images General cycle is a flood tide raises water levels until high tide. Then an ebb tide takes water back out until low tide is reached. When the tidal stream stops and reverses it is a slack tide. Generally occur with 24-hour or 12-hour period, can have a complex shape. Another kind of clock, a tide clock, has been made to show this.

This week we talk about another branch of earth science, meteorology. We discuss the upcoming severe weather season and Shannon’s close call with a tornadic storm. Also updates on past stories, feedback, and fun paper friday! Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability The Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability The Brunt Väisälä frequency Story Updates and Feedback Nasa has decided to go with the boulder snatch technique for an asteroid mission launching in 2020 If you like space news and talk, checkout “The Orbital Mechanics” podcast. A very early copy of William Smith’s map has been rediscovered at the geological society. You can view a digitized version of the map online. More on the mysterious radio bursts We got some feedback about levels (thanks Celena B.) and a problem with the show logo (thanks Ross K.). We hope we have corrected both. Please keep the feedback coming in! Severe Weather We encourge you to learn your way around and use the National Weather Service webpage. Also checkout the National Severe Storms Laborator

We’ve both been on the road recently and decided to cut together a show to share our travels with you. This week Shannon will take us into the field in NM with her students, and John will take us to Lamont for a seismology student workshop. Shannon’s Trip Shannon took her mapping class to the field for a mapping exercise. Her trip went far better than imagined. Palo Duro Canyon “The Grand Canyon of Texas" Field Guide for NM Site A surprising number of student’s hadn’t been camping before, but the school’s rec. center will rent camping equipment out to students. BLM Hoodoo trail hike Students got to look for gastroliths John’s Trip John was at the Third Annual Seismology Student Workshop at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. We got to interview one of the organizers, Zach Eilon. A few of the talks that appealed to the instrumentation nut in John were about the MERMAIDS project and using trains as a seismic source. Organizers had students introduce themselves and make a crowd-sourced mind-map of what peop

This week we thought it would be a good idea to recap some of the apps that we use on a daily basis to get our work done. We want to explicitly state that we are fully unsponsored and that these are just our opinions, not official recommendations or endorsements We chose iPhone/iPad apps since that’s what we and many of our colleagues use. A lot of these are transferrable to the Android or other platforms. Don’t tune out or you’ll miss some tips that will help you, no matter what the platform you use is. John’s App Picks Omnifocus (Task management) Overcast (Podcasts) Drafts (Quick notes) DarkSky (Weather) RadarScope (Weather) ScannerPro/Smile PDFpen Scan+ (Mobile document scanning) Dropbox/Carousel (Mobile access to documents and photo sync) Fantastical (Easy calendar viewing/entry) Newsify (Keep up with RSS feeds) Papers3 (Reading papers and paper management) Shannon’s App Picks Evernote Penultimate WxTap EarthPrimer clinoFieldMove iGeolog Trimble outdoors MyTopo maps GeoFieldBook iGeology (Britain’s roc

What is a geologic map? Conveys many sorts of geologic information The whole basis of field geology Can be a surface,bedrock, subsurface, resource, soil, etc. map Making the Map Start off with your field gear…like we talked about in episode 2. We said episode 1 in the show, but that was wrong! Have a base map (Geomorphologic map—we call these topos)…you need to know where you are at You can use an iPad/GPS with pre-loaded topo maps, or you just have your paper basemap. John likes the Garmin 62S GPS unit You don’t want to become too reliant technology in the field because it could be a life or death situation You need to have done your research before you go History of geologic maps Book: The map that changed the world, by Simon Winchester 1793 William Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smith_(geologist), who was a surveyor working for canal builders, was paying attention to all the layers of rock that he was digging through He noticed that he could trace the different layers of rock that were st

This week we talk about how sciences can weight a planet, discuss gravity, and the explosion of a military weather satellite while in orbit. Weather Satellite Explodes Ways to Measure Planetary Mass Geometric (size and density), this doesn’t always work well By triangulation and measurement of orbits of natural or artificial satellites. Gravity All stems from Newton’s Law of Gravitation. Which is really a controversy between Newton and Hooke. Gravitational constant based on the Cavendish torsion balance experiment. Measurement of the constant is difficult since it is small and we cannot measure outside of a gravitational field. With this and Kepler’s Laws, we can solve most simple problems by hand! Planetary Ranging A variety of ranging techniques can be used, including: Radio reflection Laser reflection Triangulation Fun Paper Friday THE ASTEROID REDIRECT MISSION AND SUSTAINABLE HUMAN EXPLORATION, Gates et al. This week we talk about capturing an asteroid with a bag and a pull string, or a spider like

Time is a very complex subject that you can devote your entire life to. Today we’ll cover a few of the basics and enough to get your interest up! We’ll see that it’s difficult to know what a second is and how long relative times are, but absolute time is even messier! We also discuss dried coffee and tetris! Importance of Time (and why it’s on a geology show) It synchronizes the world and our human interactions (need minutes - hours accuracy generally) It allows us to talk about events in a common coordinate system Allows synchronization of scientific measurements and comparison of data sources. This is really important for seismometers for EQ location! Let’s us use GPS! 1 billionth of a second (nano second) error in 1 GPS satellite, GPS receiver is +/- 1 ft to satellite, which is 2–3 feet on Earth. Early Timekeeping Burning candles in marked cases Hourglass Water powered clocks Pendulum clocks Galileo and Huygens (fancy temperature compensation as well) Video on Galileo Modern Time Keeping (Atomic Clock

This week we discuss the geologic time scale, meteorites, and fitness trackers! Pittsburgh Fireball Feb. 17, 2015 Video of meteor Article with details of entry Animation from meteor’s perspective NASA Fireball Network Geologic Time-it’s really big (and deep) The geologic time scale Despite all kinds of fun things to demo how vast it is…still hard to understand Cosmic Calendar Pneumonic devices for timescale-and why do we need to know it? (several examples) We make all kinds of assumptions about rocks that span millions of years, but an outcrop can change over the course of just a few years/ten years Example of things changing in days to hours Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle How do we begin to define Geologic time? International Commission on Stratigraphy: “ International Geologic Time Scale; thus setting global standards for the fundamental scale for expressing the history of the Earth” We have to have a baseline so that we can all talk about the “same” rocks across the world Age-dating rocks Many technique

Technicians at the KGRK weather radar encountered a rattlesnake during an upgrade this week. The official NWS statement says “DUE TO COMPLICATIONS INVOLVING A RATTLESNAKE DURING TODAYS UPGRADE…THE KGRK RADAR WILL REAMIN DOWN THROUGH THE OVERNIGHT HOURS AND POSSIBLY INTO WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.” Why should you backup? Not lose your data Not waste money, effort Legal obligation (taxes, grant data policy, etc) What makes a good backup? Local and offsite Multiple backups Harward and software independence Copies of raw and processed data (if possible) Archivable formats Incremental snapshots and clones It’s not okay to “backup” versions of files like this! Backup Solutions Backblaze (cloud, $50/yr) - This is what John uses for one of his backups Carbonite (cloud, $varies) - Not carbon copy cloner as said in the show Time Machine for Mac - Another backup method John uses Super Duper (Mirroring) Carbon Copy Cloner (bootable backups) Fun Paper Friday The Earth’s core is complex with possible tectonics happening

Feedback We received an article from listener Hannah about using tech in education. Thanks Hannah! Interview with Nick Holschuh Nick is a graduate student at Penn State. He tells us about his field experience, getting to Antarctica, and dealing with equipment malfunction in the field! Fun Paper Friday Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic Accidents Economic theory is built on the idea that humans, in aggregate, behave rationally. But in individual instances, under specific conditions, we find that humans rarely exhibit rationality, and so the study of these individual instances of decision-making gave birth to its own field (Behavioral Economics). It is super interesting, and is relevant to the world of science policy and public education. Here’s a crazy example of what we, as humans, do, when we fail to be rational. Contact us: Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - show@dontpanicgeocast.com John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin Any opinions, findi

This week we discuss field tools - everything from clothing to pens and notebooks! Shannon panics due to Earth’s close encounter with an asteroid and John talks about the smell after rainstorms. We want to hear your feedback! John has been playing more with radar during the northeast blizzard. Shannon has been keeping an eye on asteroid 2004 BL86 as it passed near the Earth Monday. There are already a lot of neat radar images coming from this event. Shannon is also planning her first class field trip for a field methods class. Field Packs People use everything, backpacks, fanny packs, etc. John has a holster thing like SWAT teams. Looks a little like a weapon holster though, so be careful. (He also can’t find anyone that still sells them.) Shannon uses a wait-pack. John and Shannon use stretchy belts to hold their hammers. Lots of folks use their hammer as a ruler in the field. Clipboards John has a clipboard with storage under it. The black ones gets really hot in the sun though. Shannon uses a taped to

Episode 1 - Clippy is Gone Now, Clippy Was Not a Help We discuss paper writing, figure making, debate the merits of our favorite software, and discuss a possible explanation of last week’s mysterious booms in Oklahoma. Shannon also discovers that John does strange things with his spare time and a police radar gun. We discuss the demise of clippy, the MS Word virtual assistant. Global Warming Trend Graphic John’s blog post on using a police radar gun for raindrop speed Paper and Report Writing John uses LaTeX, specifically MacTeX Shannon uses MS Word mostly There is value in features like track changes, scripting, distraction free environments, formatting, figure numbering, etc. John uses markdown initially to have a distraction free writing environment (in the atom editor) LaTeX help is easy to find! Poster and Figure Making Many options, but some are better than others Powerpoint (please don’t use this for posters or figures) Adobe Illustrator (expensive, steep learning curve, but good) Inkscape (free c

Episode 0 - “Hello World!” In this episode, we discuss what this podcast is, who we are, and wrap up our conference travels. We also throw out our nominations for this week’s “Fun Paper Friday.” The Podcast We’ll be discussing: - Recent news/discoveries in geoscience - Technology that helps get the job done - Interviews with leaders in the field or interesting people - Conference stories - Bantering about any geo vs. tech topic - #FunPaperFriday articles This podcast is for anyone working in, interested in, or vaguely associated with the Earth sciences. As Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers would say, we will often discuss things “unencumbered by the thought process.” Who we are John Leeman and Shannon Dulin, meteorology and geology geeks. Winter Conference Wrap-Up GSA - Vancouver, BC Woolard Award winner-using paleomagnetism and continental reconstructions to determine how extinctions occurred. Digital poster sessions integrating google earth and structural geology Digital posters showing how drones are be