Weathering Effects for Dummies

Wind erosion

One of the ways in which eHow.com always enables dumbassery among its freelancers is  the structure of its content: writers are not allowed to write a conclusion, merely an agglomeration of factoids. This increases the number of keywords for SEO, but is detrimental to quality. Take, for example, writer Annette Vee (yeah, sure, her surname is "Vee"), and her piece entitled "What Type of Weathering Occurs in Deserts." It was so off-topic that the site had to retitle it "Weathering Effects (with pictures)" (and then move it to Sciencing.com)! 

Sadly, even those changes didn't improve Annette's inability to inform... for instance, Vee tells us,

"As... water freezes, it expands and becomes about 10 percent larger. This expansion pushes the cracks and holes in rocks outward."

That's an Interesting construction, Annette: how do you "push a crack outward"? And then there's

"Rocks are symbols of durability and strength. Rocks are normally resistant to weathering. This resistance depends on the rock’s mineral porosity. and mineral composition." That one left the Antisocial Network's staff geologist scratching his balding head. "What on earth," he was heard to mutter, "is 'mineral porosity'?" And then there's finally this piece of utter bullshit: "Some of the rocks susceptible to weathering are limestone, and marble. Granite is a perfect example of a rock that is highly resistant to weathering." A wildly inaccurate statement. The rate at which different rock species weather is dependent on a host of factors, including climate (as Ms Vee had already stated several times), their mineralogy (also stated) and other factors. Ms Vee should probably have read her references more closely before making such an over-arching blanket statement.

As is so often the case with eHow's stable of dumbasses, since this writer knew nothing about weathering before she started, she left her readers with misconceptions and half explanations. That's another definition of a dumbass – the Dumbass of the Day.

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