Geologist jokes

There's an old joke that goes something like this (depending who's telling it): There is a geologist, geophysicist, and a petroleum engineer in a room with their boss. The boss asks, "What’s 2 times 2?"  The geologist thinks for a while says “well it’s probably more than 3 and less than 5″. The geophysicist punches it into his calculator and answers that it’s 3.999999. The petroleum engineer gets up, locks the door, pulls the curtains, unplugs the phone and says, “What do you want it to be?”

(Sometimes its the geophysicist answering with what the petroleum engineer says - only if its a geologist telling the joke!)

There's also this great Calvin & Hobbes cartoon:

Calvin thinking of the least mathematical job.

Its fun to poke at other fields and get a good laugh. The sad part is that some of this is true. Geologist depend on visual cues and mostly descriptive language. Geophysicists rely on physics and talk in equations and math. When geologists and geophysicists have to communicate with each other it can be difficult because no one understands what the other one means. And terms are not defined the same in each field. Example: a thrust fault in geology is a reverse fault that has an angle less than 30 degrees but geophysicists use the term thrust fault to describe any reverse fault!

I am experiencing this currently because I am taking a structural geology class. It's almost the end of the semester and I think we've learned less than 10 equations! We have learned over 100 definitions of different rock types and structures. For example, a fold, a rock layer that has been bent or buckled, can be described by 3 different classes of bend, 5 different classes of angle, and about 10 different shapes! Which ones a particular fold falls into is sometimes up to interpretation. As a mathematically minded person, I find the descriptive terms frustrating!

An example of chevron folds.

Geologists and geophysicist need to be able to communicate with each other. Any project focused on finding oil on land or in the sea will need both a geophysicist and a geologist to make it successful (and yes, a petroleum engineer too). As Misac, one of our geophysics professors says, "You can't do geophysics without geology!" 

So for myself and other geophysicists, I think we need to be flexible with different "languages". Get comfortable with adapting to someone else's view. The structural geology class has definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone and I needed it! The amazing thing is that this lesson is exactly the same for communicating with the public! Scientists need to learn the "language" of people who don't do research every day.

There will always be jokes but hopefully we can start useful conversations too!