I may be finding this course mildly frustrating...
From a post I just made to the course forum for my 'Practical Geology' course:
"Plotting the lavas' Zr/Y to Zr ratio on a discrimination diagram indicates a trace element chemistry normally found in island arc basalts; island arcs are commonly associated with oceanic subduction zones, so this also indicates an oceanic subduction zone origin for the ophiolite.
Not that I have the faintest idea what Y and Zr actually represent, other than a slightly incompatible element and a slightly more incompatible element, nor why a simple Zr vs Y plot wouldn't have been just as good, but never mind, I'm apparently not here to understand things."
So far, this course has mainly seemed to involve watching a short video that explained a concept, following a set of instructions that obviously have some relationship to that concept but that never seem to explain quite what, and then attempting to build the results into a geological history using background information that appears in neither this course nor any of the others anyone has taken.
Bugger this, I'm off to write porn.
"Plotting the lavas' Zr/Y to Zr ratio on a discrimination diagram indicates a trace element chemistry normally found in island arc basalts; island arcs are commonly associated with oceanic subduction zones, so this also indicates an oceanic subduction zone origin for the ophiolite.
Not that I have the faintest idea what Y and Zr actually represent, other than a slightly incompatible element and a slightly more incompatible element, nor why a simple Zr vs Y plot wouldn't have been just as good, but never mind, I'm apparently not here to understand things."
So far, this course has mainly seemed to involve watching a short video that explained a concept, following a set of instructions that obviously have some relationship to that concept but that never seem to explain quite what, and then attempting to build the results into a geological history using background information that appears in neither this course nor any of the others anyone has taken.
Bugger this, I'm off to write porn.