Thursday, September 4, 2008

In search of pictures of mud

It's the end of the first week of class, and I'm looking for some good pictures of... ummm... mud. I'm introducing students to geology this week - yesterday, for instance, we talked about things that affect where people live, and about how water moves around the planet. On Friday, I want to talk about rocks. But I don't want to start by classifying them. I want to start by getting students to look at rocks as records of things that have happened in the past. I've got plenty of rocks, and I've got some good pictures of matching environments (pebbles for a conglomerate, lava for pieces of basalt). But I've got lots of pieces of shale around, too, and I would like to use them, as well.

But, well, I don't take pictures of mud.

I've looked on a couple blogs (Clastic Detritus and Hindered Settling both have great pictures and interests in sediments), but I haven't found the perfect image yet. My comparison rock, for people who know the stratigraphy of the western US, is the Mancos Shale. So I would like to find a picture of ocean mud, if possible. The gooier, the better.

Anyone got some marine mud they're willing to share?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

so, do you want pictures of mud or mudstone ... or both?

Kim said...

I'm looking for pictures of mud. (I want to hand out some rocks and have students compare them to pictures of the stuff they could have been before.)

Anonymous said...

I'll look around ... but I can't think off the top of my head if I have any good mud shots.

Silver Fox said...

Kim, I have some recent pictures of the mud flats in Turnagain Arm, AK, with the tide part way out - although no real closeups. It's the kind of mud you can't walk on without getting permanently stuck!

Kim said...

Turnagin Arm would be great. Could you send one to shearsensibility at gmail dot com?

Callan Bentley said...

Also consider a Flickr image search... they have lots of great geology pix.

Robert Grumbine said...

Would riverine mud be sufficient? I have nearby a forest preserve with a nicely meandering river undercutting banks and leaving good muddy areas. Plus we're supposed to get Hanna, so I expect the water and mud levels will increase markedly this weekend.

Seamonkey said...

I have some great pictures of MUD...marine even. However I am at home away from said pictures. Send me an email to kfarns at iup.edu if you still need them. I will be in the office 7amish eastern time and can send them to you then (darn 8am classes!).

I think the Turnagain photo would be good too... my marine mud pictures are of cores, mud on ship decks from coring or mud on people from (you guessed it) coring.

Monado said...

If you're interested, I can upload some to flickr - tidal flats at Newport Beach, mud with tiny animal tracks at the base of the dry hills there, the hills themselves. Not too too close-up but with quite a lot of details. Then I can give you my flickr link.

Kim said...

Thanks, everyone. I think that Silver Fox's photos of Turnagain Arm will work. (They're in my Powerpoint now, at least, and they've got the added bonus of pretty mountains in the background.) I'm interested in other photos, though, too, because I still haven't scanned my slides. (Ack! Yes, I know, I've got a fetish for archaic technology.)

I've got a lot of river photos (and a lot of my students kayak or raft), and we're going to be doing a river project in lab. Most sedimentary rocks are marine, though, so I would like to get students thinking about the part of the world that's covered by water, too. (Brian's blog keeps me thinking about the oceans, too, which helps.)