Today's paper was the ridiculous "general knowledge" one.

[kaberett]

Two essays, three hours, go. That's 10% of the year. (If I remember correctly.)

Here are the prompts we got this year:

1. Impacts.
2. Water and Mars.
3. Molecules and morphology.
4. Forensic geology.
5. Antarctic climate history.
6. Mantle plumes and tectonics.
7. Gold.
8. Sinks and sources.
9. Layered intrusions.
10. The Himalaya Mountains.
11. Isotope fractionation.
12. Siderophile elements in the silicate Earth.
13. The Earth's magnetic field: past, present and future.
14. To frack, or not to frack, that is the question.
15. Seismology and the law.
16. Gutenberg-Richter and the art of noise.
17. Life on exoplanets.
18. Pores, cracks and fluids.
19. Early mollusc evolution.
20. The early Solar System.
21. Climate change is inevitable.
22. Megafloods.
23. G = H - TS.
24. Asteroids.
25. Core-mantle interactions.
26. Mantle rheology and flow.
27. When will the next mass extinction occur?
28. Life and rivers.

Comments

[403]

27. When will the next mass extinction occur?

Uh, isn't it presently occurring? Or do they want you to estimate beyond the end of the current one?

[swaldman]

Yes, it is presently occurring. Though most people seem disinclined to acknowledge this.

It's one of my supervisor's pet topics ;-)

[kaberett]

As below, some of it is "depends what you mean by 'mass extinction'" :-)

[swaldman]

Does it? AIUI (and this is certainly not my area of expertise) the current rate of loss in species per year is at least as high as any of the big 5 mass extinctions... I guess it may depend how long it goes on for.

[kaberett]

Ask me again after exams and I'll punt references over to you. This is really outside my field, but I ended up reading a fair bit about it for my lit review, and how to pick thresholds turns out to be really "interesting". Things are neither as sudden nor as necessarily Obvious Extinction Peaks as is traditionally held. :-)

[swaldman]

heh. Fair enough, although I shall politely decline - I have a big enough pile of stuff to read that *is* relevant to my work ;-)

[kaberett]

*g*

I might at least be in a position to summarise ;)

[kaberett]

Mmm, so the actual answer is "what do you mean by a mass extinction?" Because it turns out that thresholds for them are... kind of picked incredibly arbitrarily, as we get better and better data. Picking them out is... interesting. But, yep, we're definitely currently at a higher rate of extinction than average!

[ex_rising236]

Heeeeee.

(As a sidenote this inspired(?) me to go and post my english exam prompts.)

[swaldman]

Heeee. OK, it's nasty as a final, I guess, but this seems like a really nifty exam paper. It seems to be "call yourself a geologist? Write about what you find really cool!"

[kaberett]

Hah - in fact about ~10-15 of the topics are ones we covered in seminars in the first term of the year (with recommended resultant reading, even), so it's more pleasant than I make it sound! It's just that the _other_ half of the paper really IS "make shit up". I mean, essay prompt about the Italian geophysicists being convicted for not being able to do the impossible wrt predicting earthquakes? How much law are they EXPECTING us to know? :-p

[swaldman]

OK, that's an awkward one, because (except perhaps if you used it as a springboard to talk about earthquake prediction) it isn't actually about geology or seismology at all...

[kaberett]

So JJ* does go on at us at GREAT LENGTH about earthquake prediction, and you'd actually be able to pull in "and this is different from volcanoes in ways x y and z", and probably get to talking about (a) building codes (b) tsunami early-warning systems (c) differential death rates on the West Coast of the US vs Iran for the same magnitude of earthquake (d) etc -- it probably is something I could write about, but I preferred my two ;)

* not jjhunter :-)

[swaldman]

*grin* which two did you do?

[kaberett]

9 & 11, which combination is sufficient to uniquely identify me to the examiners, never mind the stuff I actually wrote ;)

[dreamfracture.insanejournal.com]

So... you voluntarily wrote an essay about isotope fractionation?

You're strange.

(and I love you)

[swaldman]

Hmm, looking at that list, 14 & 21 seem... well, 14 is clearly relevant, although a large part of the answer would seem to be politics, energy economics and climate science... but how is 21 geology?!

[kaberett]

Ridiculous "general knowledge" paper ;)

21 manages to be geology because Earth Sciences intersect pretty hard with climate science. You can't argue with the rocks, and all that - understanding the PETM, and past climate history (with adjustment for plate tectonics, etc, etc) is all geology. Transitions between snowball and greenhouse Earth conditions are geology. Discussion of anthropogenic climate forcing (via del13C, etc) pulls on geology; climate reconstruction is geology. So. ;)

[swaldman]

hmm. I'll buy it as "earth sciences", which is presumably broader than straight geology, and I would imagine includes oceanography, climatology, etc... :-P

[kaberett]

We tend to use them pretty interchangeably at this point, and in fact I think my course does style itself "Earth Science" or some shit, but as we know I mostly stick to the volcanoes ;)

[swaldman]

hee :-)

[beckyc]

21 is one of the two level 3 geology courses that you can do at the Open University.

(linky linky. Sounds like it should be an amazing course, but being sedimentary, it is a)boring, b)traumatising, which is probably an unusual combination. YMMV. )

[onyxlynx]

Icon adoration!

(I think I could, at this late date, get off a short sentence about each topic, not counting the "Yes." on #21. That is, though, a fascinating collection of subjects, and I hope you get great grades!)

[forestofglory]

Is bad that this made me feel nostalgic about 1st year geology? That was certainly the exam where I got to use my color pencils the most.

[ex_rising236]

Also looking at this again, I think that #28 was the topic of one of our anthropology exams at one point…