Today marks the one-year anniversary since the WHO declared a pandemic around the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. This has changed the way we work, live, and socialize. In the short term, this has created a tremendous burden of pain and hardship for people around the world. In the long term, I imagine it will change enable more remote, internet-based work in a wide variety of fields, with all the attendant opportunities and pitfalls that come with it.
In February 2021, I was able to do a presentation with some really excited self-proclaimed “Rock nerds” in a middle school science class on the outskirts of Chicago. This almost certainly would not have been possible before the pandemic. I spoke with them about their important geologic structures on which their school sits, and some of their own interests in the Earth sciences, including some thoughts they had for an Illinois State Rock. It was a lot of fun!
Below is the presentation I gave for their talk, where I showed them some of the local moraines (their school is directly on top of the Valparaiso Moraine). The Valparaiso Moraine is a large, broad hill that rings Chicago and helps to form one of the great Continental Divides of North America!
Riley J. Balikian 