Metamorphosis, Dummy Style

Have you ever noticed that freelancers are like politicians, at least in one way: if they don't know the answer to the question, they'll just answer one they do know – or in some cases, a different one they don't know... In the case of eHow.com's Bryan C. Booth, it appears to be the latter as he addresses the question, "What Type of Rock Does Slate Change Into?"¹

Schist outcrop

For those of you who haven't ever taken the course "Rocks for Jocks" (also known in your college's official catalog as Physical Geology G101), the answer some fifth-grader was surfing the internet to find is either "slate" or "schist." That's basically all you need to know, but Bryan was forced to expand his answer to eHow's 300-word minimum, which meant he needed padding. Padding is what he supplied, though not necessarily factual. For instance:

"Diamonds are the most famous of metamorphic rocks, starting out as humble coal."

Ummmm, no, dumbass: diamonds aren't a metamorphic rock; they're a mineral. Here's what people who know something about geology say. And then there's this bit of... utter bushwa:

"Accessible slate itself does not turn or metamorphize into another form of rock."  Huh? What do you mean by "accessible"? and is there really a word "metamorphize"? No, dumbass, it's "metamorphose"! But finally after a couple hundred words, more than a few of them nonsense, and a smattering of them rank misinformation; our Dumbass of the Day finally gets to the point: "Shale at first becomes slate, but given enough time, pressure and heat, it will continue to change into phyllite, schist and then gneiss."

About time you got around to it, moron. 

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/facts_5548611_type-rock-slate-change.html

copyright © 2015-2022 scmrak

SI - GEOLOGY