PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

Big Announcement: Roadside Geology Comes to Audio — Plus an Introduction to Sedimentary Rocks
The glove-compartment classic is now in your headphones. In this episode, we announce a partnership between Camp Courses (the team behind the CampGeo app) and the Geological Society of America to produce audio-visual editions of Roadside Geology of Colorado and Colorado Rocks! — available right now in the CampGeo mobile app.
These aren’t ordinary audiobooks. Geology books live and die by their maps, cross-sections, and outcrop photos, and CampGeo’s patented approach syncs the full narration with those images on your phone — so you can see the geology while you hear it. For us, this one is personal: the Roadside Geology series is how we learned to read a landscape, riding shotgun on rock-collecting trips from Colorado to New England.
GSA now owns the entire Mountain Press geology library, and these two titles are the first brought to audio. If listeners find them useful, more will follow — so check them out and tell us what you think. This launch is timed with the GSA Connects conference in Denver.
Download the CampGeo app now at this link.

On the app you can get tons of free content, exclusive images, and access to our Geology of National Parks series.
You can also learn the basics of geology at the college level in our FREE CampGeo content series - get learning now!

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Chris's college mineralogy lab final was 20 specimens, and one of them was a quartz crystal his professor had dipped in graphite. The luster was off, the color was off, and Chris got it wrong even though every other property said quartz. That one exam question shows why mineral ID is hard and why you need a system. This episode lays out that system.
We finish the minerals chapter of the Camp Geo audio textbook with polymorphs, which are minerals with the same chemical composition but different crystal structures. The classic example is graphite and diamond. Both are pure carbon, but in diamond each carbon atom bonds to four others instead of three. That denser arrangement is stable at high pressure, which makes polymorphs useful clues to where a rock formed. Along the way we get into synthetic diamonds, companies that turn ashes into gems (Jesse will pass on that one), and a white dwarf star that Chris describes as a 2,500-mile-wide diamond, nicknamed "Lucy" after the Beatles song.
Then Chris walks through the mineral ID flowchart he's refined over decades of teaching. Start with luster, because metallic or non-metallic decides your next step. Metallic minerals go straight to streak, and non-metallic minerals go to hardness. Chris brackets hardness on the Mohs scale with things you already carry: a fingernail (2.5), a copper penny (3.5), a knife or glass plate (5.5), and feldspar (6) and quartz (7) if you can find them. From there it's cleavage vs. fracture (the key test for telling feldspar from quartz) and why chemical bonding controls both. Then streak, where shiny silver specular hematite from Michigan's Upper Peninsula leaves a reddish-brown powder. Last come specific gravity, color, crystal form, and a few specialty properties like magnetism and fluorescence.
Color gets a public trial, because amethyst, rose quartz, and milky quartz are all the same mineral. That leads to a rescue story: Chris hauled a rose quartz specimen down a scree slope and everyone else thought it was junk. He still has it and says he was right. Then the quiz, which Chris aces.
In this episode
The graphite-dipped quartz that cost Chris a question on his mineralogy final
Polymorphs: same composition, different crystal structure
Graphite vs. diamond, and why four bonds beat three at high pressure
Synthetic diamonds, memorial diamonds, and a diamond-core white dwarf
Why mineral ID needs a structured workflow
Luster first: metallic vs. non-metallic decides your next test
The Mohs hardness scale and the fingernail–penny–knife–glass bracket
What controls hardness: the weakest link in the chemical-bond chain
Cleavage vs. fracture, and how to tell feldspar from quartz in the field
Streak: silver hematite, reddish-brown powder
Specific gravity, the "heft test," and how density separates zircons in the lab
Why color is the least reliable property (amethyst, rose, and milky quartz)
Crystal form: diagnostic when crystals have room to grow, which is rare
Magnetism, fluorescence, and willemite under a black light
The quiz: Chris goes 2 for 2
Up next: sedimentary rocks
Download the CampGeo app now at this link.

On the app you can get tons of free content, exclusive images, and access to our Geology of National Parks series.
You can also learn the basics of geology at the college level in our FREE CampGeo content series - get learning now!

Like, Subscribe, and leave us a Rating!

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There are roughly 7,000 known minerals on Earth. You need to know about ten of them. In the third installment of the Camp Geo Intro to Minerals series, Chris and Jesse finish the minerals chapter by working through the rock-forming minerals — the short list that makes up the overwhelming majority of the rocks in Earth's crust — and by explaining where minerals actually come from in the first place.
Before the top-ten list, they step outside the silicates. Just as the silica tetrahedron defines the silicate family, other mineral groups are defined by their own dominant anion: the carbonates (CO₃²⁻, home to calcite, arguably the second most important mineral group on the planet), the sulfates (gypsum, which Jesse grew up seeing mined in Michigan), and the phosphates (apatite — the stuff your teeth are made of, and a mineral Jesse's lab dates routinely). Along the way, Jesse clarifies a point from Part 1: an anion can be a single charged atom or a charged molecule like CO₃ or SiO₄.
Then, the four environments in which minerals grow — igneous (crystallizing from cooling magma or lava), metamorphic (solid-state recrystallization under heat and pressure), hydrothermal (precipitating from hot circulating water, as at Yellowstone and, far more commonly, at mid-ocean ridges), and sedimentary (salts left behind as cool saline water evaporates, think Bonneville Salt Flats). Chris flags the one that trips students up most: hydrothermal and sedimentary both precipitate minerals from water, but only one of them involves heat. This detour also produces the episode's best story: the day the two of them drove up a sketchy dirt road to the Gore Mountain garnet quarry in upstate New York without permission, watched a black Chrysler 300 come roaring up behind them, and left with about two tons of volleyball-sized garnets in the back of Chris's F-250.
Finally, the countdown: feldspar, quartz, the micas, the olivines, the pyroxenes, the amphiboles (hornblende, for intro purposes), the clay minerals, calcite, dolomite, and halite plus gypsum. Seven of the ten are silicates, and Chris and Jesse tie each one back to its tetrahedral structure from Part 2 — framework, sheet, single chain, double chain, single tetrahedron. They cover the tricks for telling calcite from dolomite (a drop of HCl fizzes like Alka-Seltzer on one and like flat pop on the other), why mica rarely survives in sedimentary rocks, why clay minerals are basically what feldspar turns into when it hits a stream, and Chris's field-tested (and decidedly not medically endorsed) use of crushed limestone as heartburn relief.
The episode closes with Jesse's quiz question for Chris, which Chris promptly declares "has potential" but needs reworking.
Download the CampGeo app now at this link.

On the app you can get tons of free content, exclusive images, and access to our Geology of National Parks series.
You can also learn the basics of geology at the college level in our FREE CampGeo content series - get learning now!

Like, Subscribe, and leave us a Rating!

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Instagram: @planetgeocast
Twitter: @planetgeocast
Facebook: @planetgeocast
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Email: planetgeocast@gmail.com
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Ask an intro geology class what the most abundant element in the crust is and, year after year, the answer comes back "carbon." It doesn't make the top eight. That gap between what feels right and what the planet is actually made of is where this lesson lives.
Chapter 2 of the Camp Geo audio textbook starts with the layered Earth — crust, mantle, and core — and why Chris's peanut M&M (with a caramel injection for the liquid outer core) beats Jesse's apple. Then the chemistry of each layer: an iron core, a silicon-oxygen-magnesium mantle, and a crust that's wrapped around the planet like tissue paper on a bowling ball and dominated by silicon, oxygen, and aluminum.
Because silicon and oxygen run the show, one building block runs the mineral world: the silica tetrahedron, a pyramid with silicon in the middle and four oxygens at the corners. Chris and Jesse walk through the five ways those pyramids link up — single tetrahedron, single chain, double chain, sheet, and framework — with bead curtains, books of mica from a Black Hills collecting trip, and quartz as the fully-connected end member. Jesse gets rambly about charge balance; Chris reins him in. Chris goes two for two on the quiz and critiques the question-writing anyway.
In this episode
Crust, mantle, core — chemical layers, and why the peanut M&M wins
What each layer is made of, and how thin the crust really is
The most abundant crustal elements (spoiler: not carbon)
The silica tetrahedron and why the 3:1 oxygen-to-silicon ratio forces sharing
The five silicate structures, simplest to most connected
Micas, pegmatite "books," and the muscovite on Chris's bookshelf
Why quartz is SiO2 and needs nothing else
The quiz: Chris goes 2 for 2
Download the CampGeo app now at this link.

On the app you can get tons of free content, exclusive images, and access to our Geology of National Parks series.
You can also learn the basics of geology at the college level in our FREE CampGeo content series - get learning now!

Like, Subscribe, and leave us a Rating!

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Instagram: @planetgeocast
Twitter: @planetgeocast
Facebook: @planetgeocast
Support us: https://planetgeocast.com/support-us
Email: planetgeocast@gmail.com
Website: https://planetgeocast.com/

Ask a room full of intro geology students whether a snowflake is a mineral and almost every hand says no. Ask why, and someone will tell you it's because no two snowflakes are alike. Chris Bolhuis has been asking that question for 25 years — he asked it of a young Jesse Reimink sitting in his high school classroom — and the answer is the whole point of this lesson.
It's been a while since we've released an episode on the Planet Geo feed, and there's more coming (plus a few projects we can't wait to announce). In the meantime, we're sharing the intro chapter of our Camp Geo audio textbook — the first lesson of the Physical Geology course you'd take in your first semester as a geology major. Several podcast platforms now display chapter artwork, which is close to how the Camp Geo mobile app works, so this is also a bit of an experiment: tell us how it lands.
Chris and Jesse start where geology starts: the five criteria something has to meet to be a mineral. It has to be solid, naturally occurring, inorganic, have a definite chemical composition, and have a definite crystalline structure. The first three are easy (though "inorganic" is on shaky ground as mineralogists warm to biominerals — this rule may not survive the decade). The last two are where students get hung up, so they slow down: quartz is always SiO2, halite is always NaCl, and swap potassium in for sodium and you've got a different mineral entirely.
Then a quick tour of the chemistry you half-remember from high school. Chris blows an atom up to the size of a 30-seat classroom — the nucleus is the tip of a pencil dangling from the ceiling, and everything else in the room is electron cloud. Jesse walks through protons, neutrons, and electrons, and why the loosely held electrons are what drive bonding. Ionic bonds transfer electrons (sodium hands one to chlorine, and a cation and anion snap together); covalent bonds share them. Chris's "paw-sitive" mnemonic and Jesse's parenting advice about covalent bonding are both, by mutual agreement, terrible. They both work.
The episode closes with the analogy that ties it all together: a five-gallon bucket of tennis balls dumped on the floor. There's one best way to stack them. Add a bucket of marbles and the best way to stack changes — a different composition forces a different structure. Because there is a definite chemical composition, there is a definite crystalline structure. Elements make minerals, minerals make rocks, rocks make the planet.
And then Jesse quizzes Chris. Chris goes one for two and files a formal complaint about question number two.
In this episode
Why we're releasing Camp Geo content on the Planet Geo feed (and what's coming)
The five criteria for a mineral — solid, naturally occurring, inorganic, definite chemical composition, definite crystalline structure
Why "inorganic" may get dropped from the definition as biominerals gain acceptance
Quartz vs. halite vs. the potassium version — what "definite composition" really means
Is a snowflake a mineral? Working through all five criteria (yes, and you're a snowflake too)
The classroom-sized atom and the pencil-tip nucleus
Protons, neutrons, electrons — and why electrons do all the bonding work
Ionic bonding: sodium, chlorine, cations, anions, and "paw-sitive"
Covalent bonding: sharing electrons instead of stealing them
The tennis-ball-and-marble analogy for crystal structure
Definite composition → definite structure → minerals → rocks
The quiz: Chris goes 1 for 2 and disputes the scoring
About the series
Camp Geo is Chris and Jesse's audio textbook version of an introductory Physical Geology course, built for the Camp Geo mobile app, where each lesson comes with a stack of images to follow along with. This is Chapter 1. Chris Bolhuis is a nationally recognized earth science teacher in Michigan; Dr. Jesse Reimink is his former student and now a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State.
Download the CampGeo app now at this link.

On the app you can get tons of free content, exclusive images, and access to our Geology of National Parks series.
You can also learn the basics of geology at the college level in our FREE CampGeo content series - get learning now!

Like, Subscribe, and leave us a Rating!

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Instagram: @planetgeocast
Twitter: @planetgeocast
Facebook: @planetgeocast
Support us: https://planetgeocast.com/support-us
Email: planetgeocast@gmail.com
Website: https://planetgeocast.com/