Pumice and Minerals for the Dummy Geology Student (Minerals Week 6)

Glassy pumice sample

The editorial staff had some concerns about whether or not to include the post featured today in Minerals Week, since its natural home might seem more closely aligned with a "Rocks Week" [note to intern: Check out the possibilities?]. The word "minerals," however, is in the title of the subject post and the author did manage to contribute to the stupidification of the internet by his post, so the nominee stayed. Here, without further ado, is Lee Morgan and "What Minerals Make Up Pumice?" at Sciencing.com.

Morgan, like so many eHowians (Sciencing is a niche site into which Leaf Group is pouring old eHow.com articles that are [allegedly] scientific), missed the forest for the trees. Or, to put it another way, he wasn't allowed to post the 13-word answer. "Pumice is volcanic glass, which cooled too quickly for individual mineral crystals to form." Therefore, Lee had to pad it out. Well, he would have padded it our if he'd ever actually written that information. Instead, Lee told his readers that

"The mineral makeup of pumice depends on the type of magma that composes the pumice foam."

Well, we looked at all of his references and none of them say that. What they do say, and what multitudinous references say about pumice, is that the chemical composition of the glass depends on the composition of the magma. That's what's known among geologists as, "Well, duh."
Unfortunately, Morgan still needed to write more than 200 words to meet the DMS minimum word count, so he decided to run with that statement. To that end, Lee favored his readers with sections entitled "Basalt Minerals, "Dacite Minerals," "Andesite Minerals," and "Rhyolite Minerals." In each, Morgan babbled for a while about some familiar volcanoes, and then explained that, for instance,

"Dacite and the pumice stones it produces are composed of plagioclase feldspar, quartz, biotite and hornblende, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica website. "

Well, no: the Encyclopedia Britannica website Morgan cites does not contain the word "pumice." Like many a "communications major" before him, Lee's grasp of the science is insufficient for him to comprehend that pumice doesn't usually comprise minerals: it's friggin' glass!

If the putz had actually read his "reference material,: he might have noticed that the Britannica website specifically says of pumice that "Sudden cooling and loss of volatiles... [chills] the material to a glass rather than [crystallizing] it." Apparently he was in too big a hurry to go there... Is it any wonder Morgan's collecting yet another Dumbass of the Day award for this work?

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