Monthly Archives: February 2013

The diminishing returns of lecture preparation

It seems that like so many other things, lecture preparation expands to take up the time available. Continue reading

Categories: academic life, teaching

Scenic Saturday: Beaver Marsh, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

A few weeks ago, some lovely January sun brought us out of our winter hibernation to explore Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The Geo Kid claimed her Junior Paleontologist badge from the National Park Service, and immediately set out to earn … Continue reading

Categories: photos

We have a seismometer in our basement…

Or, more accurately, my department does. And it rather handily picked up last week’s magnitude 8 earthquake near the Santa Cruz Islands (subject of the latest Friday Focal Mechanisms), all the way over in the southwest Pacific. Here’s the seismogram: … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geophysics

Stuff we linked to on Twitter last week

Earthquakes Debate over whether some faults detected beneath Japanese reactors are active or not is holding up nuclear restart. http://www.nature.com/news/quake-fears-rise-at-japan-s-reactors-1.12368 Seismic imaging of section of the Alpine Fault in NZ finds 3 principal en echelon strands, several shallow secondary splays. … Continue reading

Categories: links

Friday Focal Mechanisms: before and after the M8 Santa Cruz Islands quake

On Tuesday night American time (Wednesday lunchtime local time), a magnitude 8 earthquake occurred near the Santa Cruz Islands, a set of small islands east of the Solomon Islands. In this region, the Australian plate is subducting to the north-east … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, tectonics