Obviously I did not do a very good job of updating this blog last semester. Our new semester starts on Monday August 29 and I will resolve to do better over Fall. I'm excited to be teaching Introduction to Earth Science to a new group of students and as usual our topic for the first week will be minerals. I will try and find something interestijng to discuss.
In the meantime there was an interesting geological event yesterday: the magnitude 5.8 Mineral, Virginia earthquake. Callan Bentley, an assistant professor of geology at Northern Virginia Community College, has a really interesting post about the earthquake over at his blog. You should take a look. He says one possible explanation for the earthquake might be differential rebound of the crust due to isostatic adjustments. We will be discussing isostasy later in the semester.
