Petrology for (and by) Dummies

rock cycle

It's been a while since we made our poor staff geologist read through the sort of rubbish that gets published by money-hungry freelancers writing in a second language. Well, his long rest is over and the nightmare has begun, for we dragged him – kicking and screaming, in case you wondered – out of his little cave, sat him down, and forced him to respond to a HubPages.com post. It's "Types of Rocks: It’s Cycles and Classifications" [sic] by Kenneth C. Agudo...

As much as he wanted to, we wouldn't let the staff geologist rake Agudo over the coals for his crummy English, given that our guy only speaks a word or two of Tagalog. Be that as it may, Kenneth's post was rife with half-baked factoids, half-assed statements, and just plain stupidification. We'll let some of his words speak for themselves (and let the geologist comment on them)...

• "Petrologists developed hundred of observations from thousands of rock samples found in all parts of the world. " –  Seems rather shallow, Kenny. Couldn't you have said "millions"?
• "Petrologists find difficulties in describing gand [sic] classifying the rocks. " – No, they're pretty good at it, Kenny. It's you that has the difficulty.
• "...rocks from the moon... can be used to study rocks from other celestial bodies." – Probably not, Kenny.
• "...sometimes the origin of the metamorphic rocks cannot be determined." – Now why would you say that?
• "obsidian... is a volcanic rock made up of glass and coal... " – No, it's not "made of" ether. It's volcanic glass, but where the coal bullshit comes from, we have no idea.
• "...when the igneous rock transported, deposited and consolidated and undergone the process of lithification... it become [sic] sedimentary rocks. " – You forgot weathering and erosion, Kenny.

• "When metamorphic rock deeply buried due to heat and pressure it may be remitted [sic] to new igneous material..." – We hate to tell you this, Kenny, but you can melt sedimentary rocks, too, and even – gasp – remelt igneous rocks!
• "Before magma rich [sic] the earth’s surface, it has been crystallized into some as layers of lava (extrusive flow rocks) and others are as pyroclastic debris ion [sic] explosive eruption. " – Actually, Kenny has that wrong: only after magma reaches the surface does it form pyroclastics or lava; otherwise it forms plutons.
• "Obsidian(volcanic) [sic]... Its hardness is of about 7." – Nope, obsidian is relatively softer. Kenny apparently confused it with quartz.
• "Chert... It is a water-worn pebbles and cobbles" –  Not sure what you're getting at here, Kenny...

After just those ten examples, we had to haul the poor geologist back into his cave, gibbering and drooling. Suffice it to say that of Agudo's 1000-plus words, a substantial portion were... what's that term? Oh, yeah. "wrong." So now you know why Kenneth is our Dumbass of the Day. It's a shame he didn't understand the cris-crossing arrows on the rock cycle image.

Any questions?

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