Friday Rock Blogging: Sand Boils
So sand is just little weensy rocks, anyway. And this is a weensy volcano made of sand, in Peru. It’s about a meter (0.33% of a football field) across.
Normally, layers of sand and silt and crap underground bear the weight of whatever’s on top of them through a network of contacts between individual sand grains. During an earthquake, if the sand grains are loosely packed, this network is disrupted. But the stuff on top is still there, being all heavy and shit. Wacky hijinks ensue!
If the jiggling sand happens to be wet, all the overburden pressure is transferred to the water. Water, being incompressible, is not happy about being squeezed like this; if it finds a suitable weak spot, it will squirt out. And voilà, a pretty sand boil!
denisdekat wrote:
oh yeah, you did sand So fun!
Posted 18 Apr 2020 at 5:47 am ¶
Joe wrote:
Sand boils are sweet.
any geologic phemonena that is described with disease-like terminology is perfect.
what about:
limestone warts?
festering spatter cone?
infectious sedimentation?
flatulent fumerole?
Posted 18 Apr 2020 at 6:53 pm ¶
yami wrote:
I’ve always thought “oolitic” sounded rather unhealthy.
Posted 18 Apr 2020 at 7:04 pm ¶
Friday Rock Blogging: Evaporites wrote:
[…] known as “squiggly lamination” (”convolute” if you’re trying to sound professional). Like sand boils, it’s formed by squirts of water; unlike sand boils, the formative […]
Posted 13 May 2020 at 9:49 am ¶
nikla wrote:
sand boils turn me on they look cool
Posted 26 Jan 2020 at 10:29 am ¶
Kyle wrote:
You guys are a bunch of nerds talking about gay sand boils get a fricken life!!
Posted 26 Jan 2020 at 2:08 pm ¶
yami wrote:
Oh man Kyle you have us so pegged. But sometimes we also talk about heterosexual sand boils. And also, it’s not polite to “out” a gay sand boil - even if these two sand boils seem very open about their relationship, they may not feel ready for their grandmothers to know. Now it’s all over the Internet!
Posted 27 Jan 2020 at 1:33 pm ¶