Geological Forces for Dummies

Reverse fault diagram

It's been a few months since we skewered anyone at HubPages.com, so we sent an intern in to crawl the citations file for a suitable candidate. She came back with a pile, but we didn't have to dig any deeper than the reference slip on the top of that pile. Even though our staff geologist was still recovering from yesterday's post, we figured he wouldn't have any problems dispatching Kenneth C. Agudo and his opus, "Earth Science: Geological Forces that Gives Life to Earth." [NOTE: given that English isn't Agudo's native language, we'll maintain a focus on factual matters instead of grammatical errors.]

What called some staffer's attention to this post is Kenneth's list of these "forces" in the first sentence of his post:

"There are six forces that give life and shape the earth, these are: diastrophism, earthquakes, mountains, plateaus, plains and volcanism."

We won't even argue against the notion that anything gives "life" to the Earth. All we'll do here is point out that "mountains, plateaus, [and] plains" aren't forces: they're topographic features. But let's see what Agudo has to say about these "forces."

First, Kenneth defines diastrophism, including the notion that "Thrust... is the horizontal movement of the crust." Well, no, Kenneth, the horizontal movement of the crust is what's sometimes called continental drift. To a geologist, "thrust" is a classification of a fault. Kenneth then "explains" that the positions of the continents change through time because the Earth's diameter is changing. Uhhh, no.

When it comes to faults, Agudo informs us that there are three types, including normal, thrust, and reverse. OK... but telling us that the reverse fault...

"...is the opposite of the normal fault in which the fault plane moves upward..."

Is complete bull. The fault plane doesn't move, Ken, the hanging wall block moves! But there is, of course, more. When he gets to the section on earthquakes, Kenny informs us,

"Primary waves- it moves forward and backward direction."

We guess that's his definition of "compressional"... Agudo also says that man-made earthquakes include, "Seismic waves - It is a sound traveling across the earth caused by earthquake." Ugh.

That in and of itself is enough to qualify this "computer engineer" for an award. Thankfully, the section on disatrophism comprises more than half of the post, but there's still time for Agudo to slip in rubbish like

"Anticline is the crust of the rock which is in the higher region and the trough of the rock is the syncline which is in the lower region." "How to prevent Earthquake..." "Plains... is [sic] usually portions of nearly level sea bottom."

Need we say more? No, we needn't: whatever his command of the English language, Agudo managed to impart some serious misinformation here, and that's what counts when it comes to Dumbass of the Day nominations. Congrats, Ken.

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