Geo Field Report

Whiteface Mountain as viewed from entrance of Whiteface Mountain Ski Center (44.3532, -73.8566), Sunday Apr. 7, 2024, in Wilmington, NY.    Credits: Geo Field Report As part of our 2024 solar eclipse trip, my family visited the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York state.  The Adirondack Mountains are a collection of mountains, called a "massif", that tend to move around together and maintain the internal relative structures.  In fact, the Adirondack Mountains are still growing in present days, rising by around an inch every year. It's difficult to capture the grand-scale movement of the Adirondack, but we can appreciate some of the finer details like how glaciers shaped these mountains.  From the entrance of the Whiteface Mountain Ski Center, one can get a clear view of the east side of the impressive Whiteface Mountain. The red dashed line shows the amphitheater-shaped valley, called a "cirque", on the east side of the Whiteface Mountain.    Cred...

  Rollstone Boulder (42.5866, -71.8059), Sunday Feb. 11, 2024, in Fitchburg, MA.    Credits: Geo Field Report A lot of the geographical features of northern New England is shaped by glaciers.  The foci of our last report, the Two Brothers Rocks, were medium-sized (~4 ft tall each) glacial erratics.  Today we visited a bigger glacial erratic, the Rollstone Boulder in Fitchburg, MA. Prior to this visit, I've always wondered: rocks can be moved by human activity, at what scale do geographers conclude that only nature could've done the work.  The Rollstone Boulder is probably a good example with some history behind it.  The boulder originally sat near some quarries, and the quarry owners agreed to preserve the boulder.  Later (late 1920s/early 1930s), Fitchburg hired a mason to move the boulder to the town center.  The move proved to be a lot harder than anticipated, the mason ended up breaking the boulder into pieces and glued the pieces togethe...

The Two Brothers Rocks (the Winthrop rock in the foreground and the Dudley rock in the back) with the Concord River in the background  (42.5151, -71.3055) , Feb. 4, 2024, in Bedford, MA.    Credits: Geo Field Report Along the banks of the Concord River in Bedford, MA are two good-sized rocks that are at least 4 feet tall and probably only 20 yards away from each other.  They are known as the Two Brothers' Rocks.  The "two brothers" referred to two early governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley, who used these rocks as property dividing lines. These rocks are likely glacial erratics given the size of the boulders and the glaciation history of the area.  As far as erratics go, the Two Brothers Rocks are not as famous as the Plymouth Rock, and they are not the biggest in the area.  But having two sizable erratics that sit next to each other is impressive.  Kind of reminds me of the rock scene in the movie Everything ...

  The Moswetuset Hummock as viewed from Quincy Shore Reservation (42.2807, -71.0177), Jul. 30, 2023, in Quincy, MA.    Credits: Geo Field Report The Moswetuset Hummock marker (42.2895, -71.0224), Jul. 30, 2023, in Quincy, MA.    Credits: Geo Field Report I am a huge fan of the food scene in Quincy, MA.  But only recently have I tried to look more into what Quincy offers in geography.  Quincy has a sandy coastline, but one nearby spot caught my eyes, the Moswetuset Hummock. Today, a "hummock" means a small mound or knoll, and often the example pictures show these small mounds in the ground.  But the word had a nautical origin 500 years ago, it meant "a small hill that is conical- or dome- shaped that rises above the coastline".  Hey, that's a very good description of the Moswetuset Hummock! The Moswetuset Hummock has a good bit of history, too.  It is believed to be the location where the Massachusetts tribe first met with the Plymou...

  Panoramic shot of the Stratham Hill Park ground from the fire tower (43.0395, -70.8901), Sunday Jun. 19, 2022, in Stratham, NH.    Credits: Geo Field Report Recently I've been hooked on some crime mystery TV series.  It seems that for each series, there would be an episode or two involving the "mystery murder weapon" that disappeared into thin air leaving only a smudge on the floor as the clue.  Ice, which melts under room temperature, has inspired many mystery stories.  To me, a mystery on a much grander scale would be how ice has transformed our landscape.  Glacier, a river of ice, is capable to carve out valleys and move rocks.  Some glaciers have disappeared, leaving only clues for us to figure out what happened. One such clue is the rock deposits left behind.  The smaller rocks are called moraines and sometimes there are bigger pieces that look like hills, these are called drumlins.  Drumlins have some very interesting geographica...

A compass Credits: Wikimedia   With the pandemic, I've been staying indoor most of the time browsing the Internet.  While looking around Google Map for ideas on future trips, I noticed something very interesting about the Forbidden City.   Do you also see it?  The Forbidden City is oriented at a small angle counter-clockwise from the true North-South line! I dug a little online, and some have suggested that this deviation is due to the use of compasses in fengshui.  What that means is, the Forbidden City was likely planned along the "magnetic North-magnetic South" line instead of the "true North-true South" line.  The phenomenon that the magnetic North differs from the true North is called magnetic declination or magnetic variation. The exact cause of magnetic declination is complicated, but the short version is that the magnetic materials in the earth's crust are not perfectly aligned with the true North and true South.  Imagine suspending a bar mag...