I love rocks. It is as simple as that. Rock music can be great too, but here, I am literally writing about rocks. The issue is that I only know what I know, and wow, there is so much more I want to learn. The best way I think I can discover more is by openly sharing what I know so others can help me fill in the blanks. Hence, this Beyond Geology website is born.
I hope this will inspire others to ask me questions or share their ideas about rock. And even better yet, to invite me to see, photograph, video, and write about the rocks I have yet to see. However, I am not a geologist (point made specifically for my 3 children who call me one to bug me). I am a geological engineer who is most interested in why and how we excavate rocks for society.
It isn’t that I don’t like geologists. Quite the contrary. They are brilliant and I could not do my job in engineering without them as they are the ones that find the useful rocks that all of society needs. It is just that they are extremely good with words that I cannot pronounce let alone spell. I commend geologists for being the ones that continue to describe and locate so much of the “useful” rock on our planet. I am using geologists as my role models and taking a stab at adding to what they have done by telling engineering stories of rock.
I love open educational practices. If you don’t know what those are, there is a great TedTalk by David Wiley. We have access to so much technology, at our fingertips literally, and I want to use it to educate others on why the mining industry is so important in Canada. This website would not exist if it wasn’t for the resources that went into the computer I am typing on, the electricity that is powering it, and huge strides in technology in the 20th century.
This is the start of my website where I will share free educational resources about engineering with rock. I hope that as I learn and share, that others will also be willing to do the same and we can move society a step forward in understanding why and how we the extract rock that the geologists located for us. If we cannot grow what society uses, we must mine it. Stay tuned to learn about how and where we do this.