Pumice for the Dummy Manicure Technician

pumice sample

The staff geologist has had to read through a lot of freelance garbage over the years, mostly barfed out on the net by out-of-work liberal arts grads back during the great recession (the last one, anyway). A not particularly surprising number of those worthies attempted to resurrect long-buried knowledge from their freshman-year science elective and, sadly, just plain didn't get it right. To the pantheon of DotD science attempts, let's add Collin Fitzsimmons for his rather sad take on "How Is Pumice Formed?" from Sciencing.com.

If truth be told, Fitzsimmons got fairly close (closer than, say, Joan Whetzel). Most of Collin's problems come from either attempting to pad his information to make it longer or failure to understand what it was he thought he was saying. Of course, that latter is the main reason a lot of people pick up one of our awards.
Here are a few places where we figure Collin could have improved on what he wrote:

• "Pumice is a unique rock, noted for its light weight and low density..." — It's just low density, Collin, not "light weight." Weight is determined by density plus volume.
• "Pumice is formed by lava coming into contact with water. This occurs most often with volcanoes near or under water. " — Actually, it happens because the lava has a high gas and water-vapor content, not (necessarily) because it comes in contact with water.
• "When the hot magma comes into contact with the water..." — It's not magma, Collin, it's lava.
• "...rapid cooling and rapid de-pressurization creates bubbles by lowering the boiling point of lava. " — Yes, but how? The bubbles are created by gases coming out of solution as the lava's temperature is lowered, not its "boiling point."
• "Because pumice is igneous, it is at times glass-like, and the bubbles are trapped between the thin translucent bubble walls of rock." — We don't know what the "at times" is about, but we do know that the bit about "the bubbles are trapped between the thin translucent bubble walls" is circular.

By now it should be pretty obvious that Fitzsimmons was out of his depth trying to write about igneous rocks. Either he didn't understand what he was writing about or he didn't think it was worth doing more research. Either way, Collin is getting a Dumbass of the Day award.

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