What I thought I would do today
is talk for a little while about some of the geology of Maine's coast,
as it is one of the founding ways in which we start to learn about the coastline itself.
I invite you to look at your feet.
It's flat! It's been polished. Right?
So remember these glaciers are acting like a giant piece of sandpaper.
So they're actually smoothing over that
and they're making this really nice, flat, smooth surface.
Now, which way you do think the glacier was flowing?
That way.
Okay, so we think it was flowing to the north?
Well, no...
Hmm. (Laughter)
Alright, so let's take a look at what the evidence is that we can see again.
So that is a glacial striation.
What you are seeing here is evidence of a piece of rock
that was embedded at the base of a glacier
and as that glacier was scouring across the landscape
it went kkkkkkkhhhhhh.....
So now that we have seen one, I want to see if you guys can see any more.
Mm, that one is at like, 1 degree.
Five.
Now just go over and take some measurements of the orientation of the bedrock
to see whether or not the bedrock matches up with the island's topography.
It was published in 1971
by Arthur Hussey, professor of Bowdoin College.
So what we can see as we look at this map here
is that the orientation — the colors themselves —
start of kind of pointing this way, and as we go across Casco Bay
they're ending up pointing more north-south.
So what is actually happening is that the rock units here...
