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My friend said all granite looks the same and I had to set him straight
We were hiking near Boulder last weekend and he pointed at a big rock face, calling it 'just more gray granite'. I told him it was actually Pikes Peak granite, full of big pink feldspar crystals you can see from the trail. He said it was just a rock and didn't matter, but that specific granite tells a story about how the mountains here formed. It really made me think about how people miss the details that make geology so cool. Do you have a go-to rock or mineral you use to explain why this stuff isn't boring?
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betht323mo ago
Pikes Peak granite is a perfect example. What's your favorite rock formation that has a story like that? I always end up talking about columnar basalt from old lava flows.
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milesrobinson3mo ago
Oh man, I feel that. I once tried to explain why slate was cool and just ended up talking about chalkboards for ten minutes. I'm not the best at this.
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Used to think columnar basalt was just some boring hexagon thing, you know? Like who cares about a bunch of rocks shaped the same way. Then I saw Devil's Tower in person and it totally clicked, the way those columns rise up like that, all from that old lava cooling and cracking. Now I can't stop noticing it in photos or drives through the PNW. It's wild how a story about lava flows makes them so much more interesting than just weird rocks.
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