Gold Panning Trip

Here are a couple if pictures from our gold panning outing.

Above is Bruce Williams learning from the master Roy Row.

Tiny golden fortunes were made by most of the people-- I however still need to find a single flake of gold.

Harry Allen

A volcano that is not a Volcano

Two years ago a well blew out in Indonesia which caused a large amount of mud to bubble up -- It is still going on. This gives you an idea of the scale of the mud problem.

Sidoarjo's Man-made Mud Volcano - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Harry Allen

Volcanoes from Space

Part two.

How do we know where volcanoes will erupt?

One of the ways is to look for evidence that there is a magma on the move. We should see swarms of small earthquakes and some pushing up of the earths surface as the magma moves up.

Take a look at the Three Sisters area in Calf. --it went up 15cm in 4 years --that is huge. Check out the radar data in this article:

Monitoring Volcanoes from Space

Harry Allen

Moho review

Terry Steinborn -- one of our members is teaching a OLLI class on volcanos . One of the class questions was how deep is the bottom of the crust? There is a good map of how deep in the following article:


Mohorovicic Discontinuity - The Moho - GEOLOGY.COM


Take a look at where we are --in our part of the basin and range -- it is thick in our portion of the crust.

Harry Allen

geotaging photos

In case anyone wants to record where you took a field photo and see it on Google Earth. I found a tutorial on how to geotag your photos and put the lat /long into the header info of your digital camera (EXIF file).

http://www.macameraclub.com/Geotagging.pdf

It uses all free programs so the cost is right. You can see what amd where you have photographed on Google Earth and post them for all to see if you choose.

Harry Allen

The Saturday morning gold panning field trip was a big success - at least in terms of learning how to pan for gold, if not for the volume of gold discovered. Nineteen people showed up to wade in Lynx Creek near Stoneridge in Prescott Valley. Roy Row and Kevin Hoagland shared knowledge and showed the different panning techniques for plastic pans with riffles (preferred) and the old fashioned metal pans. Roy came up with the largest "nugget," a flake that he estimated was worth about 15 cents. Most of the panners at least had a grain of gold by the end of the morning; it didn't pay for the gas, but those big nuggets are out there waiting.

mentos

Just for fun--from the nsf. (and the Lee Allison blog)


http://nsfgov.httpsvc.vitalstreamcdn.com/nsfgov_vitalstream_com/mentos_coke.swf

Try this at home-- if you dare.

Is it be similar to what happens in a geyser?

Harry Allen

All of My Faults Are Stress-Related: Tectonics of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake

I found an answer to why the deadly Chinese quake happened so far from the normal plate boundaries.

All of My Faults Are Stress-Related: Tectonics of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake

This blog -- from Durango CO also has some interesting geo-thoughts about the four corners area. Check the archives section.

We hope to have the details on the panning field trip soon --e. g. if a place can be found with enough water to do the panning as well as a chance to find a flake of gold.


Harry Allen

Geology.com - Earth Science News, Maps, Dictionary, Articles, Jobs

This is another good website for the latest geologic happenings worldwide.

Geology.com - Earth Science News, Maps, Dictionary, Articles, Jobs


They often have good small articles about the latest geo events.


Harry Allen