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Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words

Why I love the earth

Pale rock outcroppings breaking through prairie grass in Big Cypress National Preserve. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Geology" page.
Pale rock outcroppings breaking through prairie grass in Big Cypress National Preserve. Tracy Enright, U.S. Geological Survey · Public domain
  • The ground is a stack of stories.
  • The bottom layer is the oldest one.
  • This whole place used to be somewhere else.

What it really is

Geology reads the earth's layers to find out what happened and when.

Three things to try today

  1. Find a cut hillside or road cut and count the layers.
  2. Say which one is oldest.
  3. Look for the layer that is bent or broken.
A USGS scientist stands against a folded, strongly deformed rock face on Divide Mountain, Alaska, examining the layers up close. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Geology" page.
A USGS scientist stands against a folded, strongly deformed rock face on Divide Mountain, Alaska, examining the layers up close. Jamey Jones, USGS · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

Superposition — oldest on the bottom — is a four-year-old idea that runs the whole field.

Why I love the earth — 4,299 places across America

Alabama (87)
Alaska (33)
Arizona (43)
Arkansas (86)
California (273)
Colorado (85)
Connecticut (27)
D.C. (1)
Delaware (5)
Florida (158)
Georgia (185)
Hawaii (8)
Idaho (54)
Illinois (155)
Indiana (117)
Iowa (112)
Kansas (116)
Kentucky (129)
Louisiana (81)
Maine (21)
Maryland (35)
Massachusetts (53)
Michigan (120)
Minnesota (111)
Mississippi (88)
Missouri (131)
Montana (61)
Nebraska (97)
Nevada (22)
New Hampshire (13)
New Jersey (45)
New Mexico (40)
New York (90)
North Carolina (127)
North Dakota (57)
Ohio (124)
Oklahoma (88)
Oregon (51)
Pennsylvania (88)
Rhode Island (6)
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (5)
South Carolina (65)
South Dakota (68)
Tennessee (114)
Texas (340)
Utah (48)
Vermont (16)
Virginia (158)
Washington (77)
Washington, D.C. (1)
West Virginia (64)
Wisconsin (95)
Wyoming (25)

Love something else too

All 51 things to love · Girls are great at math