Rock Formations for Dummies

The Rock Cycle

While we had the staff geologist up from hibernation a couple of days ago, one of the staffers shoved a second candidate under his door (and ran). That's because, if the guy has a pet peeve, it's the misuse of the word "formation" by non-scientists. Over many years he's learned to accept "rock formation" as a description of a geographic feature, but he still gets apoplectic at the phrase "geologic formation" when misapplied. All that was before he ran across a ridiculous piece of twaddle at Sciencing.com, the post "3 Types of Rock Formations" penned by Jennifer Ratliff.

We can't (really) blame Ratliff for the inanity of the title; after all, how was she going to earn her stipend by telling the OQ that the query makes no sense. Instead, Ratliff launched into (her version of) an elementary petrology lesson about the three rock types: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. To that end, she sort of succeeded, at least until she realized that she still hadn't met that damnable minimum word count. That's not to say that the first 300 words or so are pure information; for they include such drivel as,

• "In many areas of the country roads are cut straight through large slabs of rock, evidence of the necessary interaction between man and nature." – "Slabs"? Really?
• "[Igneous] rocks are associated with volcanoes and form at plate boundaries..." – "Associated with"? Oh, and it's interesting that Jennifer chose an image of Hawaii to illustrate igneous activity... and Hawaii is nowhere near a plate boundary...
• "Sedimentary rocks take thousands of years to form" – More like thousands of thousands, Jennifer.
• "...metamorphic sedimentary rocks retain the layers, but the layers are bent and compressed..." – Ummm, not necessarily. Many foliated metamorphic rocks have planar foliation. 

Once she got her version of the three rock types out of the way, Ratliff basically started spitballing, coming up with such cockamamie notions as,

• "Gemstones are Large Crystals" – No, they're not: they're elegant crystals; except perhaps onyx, which Ratliff mentioned as an example. And just in case you're as uninformed as Jennifer, ruby and sapphire are the same mineral; just different colors.
• "...[after]deposition as sediments... the rocks may be pushed further into the Earth and incorporated into the molten inner layers, or they may be brought to the surface over time as sedimentary rocks." – What's this crap about "incorporated into the molten inner layers"? Does Ratliff really think sedimentary rocks somehow make their way to the core?
• "...rocks may be millions of years old..." – The phrase, "No duh" comes to mind.

We'll admit that Ratliff had a stupid question to start with, but that's no excuse. Our Dumbass of the Day did a pretty lousy job of answering this particular question, mostly because she knew nothing of the topic. Welcome to eHow.com!

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