Punny Geology Trivia Quiz

Answer: Garnet!

It was dark red and dodecahedral as well. Did I mention that garnet is dense? Actually, conversion of some of the minerals in oceanic crust into garnet is responsible for subducted plates sinking all the way to the core-mantle boundary! So it really would have hurt, that is, if I weren't just making this all up for the purpose of the joke!

Answer: He was in deep schist

You were probably expecting this answer for the previous question, right? Well, here it is. And now, I have to make this *educational.* Schist is described as "foliated" because you can see different layers in it. Schist can be shiny from flakes of mica. Schist starts out life as mud, which compacts and lithifies into shale, which can be metamorphosed under heat and pressure into slate, which can be metamorphosed under even greater pressures and temperatures into schist. Cool, huh?

Answer: Because he "felsic"

Igneous rocks can be described either as "felsic" or "mafic." Felsic rocks, like granite and rhyolite, have a high proportion of silica. Mafic rocks, like basalt and gabbro, have a low percentage of silica and a relatively high percentage of magnesium and iron. One time I really did tell my geology professor that I couldn't mafic to the test because I felsic...It was true! I promise!

Answer: He always "gypsum"

Sheet rock is made mostly out of the mineral gypsum. You can add water and mix it into a slurry, squish it between two boards, and it sets hard. Gypsum itself is a pretty snazzy mineral. It forms when large quantities of seawater evaporate, along with halite (salt) and a fair number of other evaporite minerals.

In some places you can find huge chunks of transparent gypsum. In other places, you can find massive gypsum, which is also known as alabaster. The Palace of Knossos on Crete, ca. 1500 BCE, is mostly built out of gypsum, but not in the form of sheet rock!

Answer: Cummingtonite?

Yes, this really IS a real mineral! I wonder if Mr. (Dr.?) Cummington really anticipated the full consequences of a mineral being named after himself.

Anyway, Cummingtonite is a chain silicate with the formula (Mg,Fe)2(Mg,Fe)5Si8O22(OH)2 Really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? It's monoclinic with 2/m symmetry, biaxial positive or negative, with a 2V angle of 65-98 degrees. Thrilling. Surely there must be something interesting about it in this book..."a firm identification requires optical or other tests." Useful to know, I guess. "Occurs in metamorphosed mafic to ultramafic rocks." I knew it. Right-O.

Oh, goodie, here's the good part. It "has been used as asbestos in some industrial applications, but mining has been limited to South Africa, so distribution is not wide. It has been implicated in health risks associated with asbestos." Oh-oh. I knew there was something fishy about this bad boy!

Answer: Don't take everything for granite

Groooaaaaannnn. Yes, this is THE obligatory geology pun. And I had to do it. I couldn't resist. Quick, on to the interesting information! You hear that granite is made up of quartz (clear), K-feldspar (pink), and mica (black). But that's not all! Granite can also contain plagioclase feldspar (white) and hornblende (black, but not flaky like the biotite.) If your TA is sadistic, he will make you estimate the relative percentages of all of these! Well...it's usually K-feldspar, quartz, plagioclase feldspar, mica, and hornblende, in that order. So now you know!

Answer: Mineral the same

OK, OK...there are actually quite a few things you can do to get yourself out of this predicament. How do you identify minerals? Here's a quick list of tests you can do:
1) Color-- not totally reliable, but it can substantially narrow down the list of choices.
2) Taste-- Licking rocks looks stupid, but if it's halite, it'll taste salty. If it's glauconite, you can tell everyone they're eating fossilized trilobite dung.
3) Hardness-- Can you scratch it with your fingernail (2)? A penny (3.5)? A piece of glass (6)? Well, you know the hardness, then.
4) Acid-fizz-- Carbonates will fizz if you drop dilute hydrochloric acid on them. You dilute the acid to keep it from eating away at your skin...though it won't stop it from eating away at your shirt, as happened to me!
5) Streak-- rub it against a ceramic plate. What color streak does it leave? Generally more consistent than color alone.

Answer: Graben the bull by the horns

Mmmmm...graben. Did you see the next question? Perhaps I was horst by my own petard. That phrase is from Shakespeare, too, you know-- Hamlet, act III, scene 4, lines 206 and 207: "For 'tis sport to have the engineer/ Hoist with his own petar." Now, back to our regularly scheduled program about grabens. If you want to see some horsts and grabens, you can go to Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA, where there apparently are some. I've never been there.

But if you do go, let me know.

Answer: A horst, a horst, my kingdom for a horst!

You see, Richard III was a structural geologist, and his work on horsts and grabens was really more important to him than either his kingdom OR his evil plans! He'd just established that normal (nearly vertical) faulting leaves high-standing blocks of land (horsts) and down-dropped blocks (grabens), and wanted to expand on it a bit.

Answer: 2V or not 2V, that is the question

Only biaxial minerals have a 2V angle, the angle between the two optic axes. Uniaxial minerals (big surprise) only have one optic axis, so they don't. I suspect confusion over this important point may have caused Hamlet much of his angst.

So, at the conclusion of this quiz, I have to admit, I was inspired by Ing, who wrote a rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-ly funny quiz about puns in famous lines of musicals. My (metaphorical) hat is off to her! Now go take HER quiz!