Questions to Ask a Geologist
Questions for a geologist on a field trip, at a talk, at a careers event, or on a site visit, covering how they read a landscape, what is under your feet, local hazards and water, what the job is actually like, and how to start looking properly yourself.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What are we standing on, and how old is it?
The easiest opener there is and it works anywhere, including a parking lot. Ages come with a range attached rather than a single number, and asking how they know the figure is what turns a fact into a conversation.
- 2
What is the story of this landscape, in the order it happened?
Geologists think in sequence, so this is the shape their knowledge is already in. Expect deposition, then deformation, then erosion, and expect the final chapter to be far more recent than you assumed.
- 3
What do you see here that I would walk straight past?
Every geologist has a set of things they cannot stop noticing: a road cutting, the profile of a hill, the tilt of a bedding plane, the stone in a garden wall. It is the most reliably enjoyable question you can ask one.
- 4
How do you tell one rock from another in the field, with no lab?
The answer is a short practical routine: grain size, hardness, how it breaks, whether it fizzes with acid, and what sits around it. Ask them to run the routine on a rock you pick up and you will still remember it a year later.
- 5
What is the oldest thing you have held?
It produces a story instead of a fact, usually with a comparison that makes deep time land better than a number ever does. It also tends to reveal which corner of the discipline they actually love.
- 6
What made you pick geology?
The honest answers are more varied than people expect: one field trip, a summer job, a particular teacher, wanting work that happens outdoors. Very few planned it from childhood, which is worth hearing if you are considering it yourself.
- 7
What does a normal week look like: field, office, or lab?
Field work is the recruiting image and is often a small fraction of the year. The ratio varies enormously between employers, and getting a real number is the single most useful thing a student can take from this conversation.
- 8
How much of the job is writing?
Usually far more than anyone expects, because consulting and research both end in documents. Anyone weighing up the career should know that the product of the work is a report, not a rock.
- 9
Who employs geologists around here?
The list is local and rarely obvious: water authorities, environmental consultancies, geotechnical and construction firms, quarries, insurers, government surveys. It is a much better career question than asking what jobs exist in general.
- 10
What is the hazard in this area that people underestimate?
Answers tend to be unglamorous and specific: ground that shrinks and swells, old mine workings, the rate the coast is retreating, radon, poorly compacted fill. It is often the most practically useful thing you will hear all day.
- 11
How do you date something, and how confident are those numbers?
Ask about the method and about the error bars together. It is the quickest route into how the science actually works, and geologists are usually pleased to explain why a date is properly stated as a range.
- 12
What can you measure here, and what do you have to infer?
The line between observation and interpretation is the core discipline of the field. Asking about it directly gets you a much more careful and more interesting answer than a general question about how they know things.
- 13
Where does the water here come from, geologically?
Aquifers, catchments and the rock that either stores or blocks water are things geologists know about their own area in unusual detail. It connects the rocks to something everybody in the room used that morning.
- 14
Where did the stone in the buildings around here come from?
Local building stone is usually local geology, and the answer often involves a quarry that closed a century ago. It is the right question to ask in a city, where all the outcrops are in the walls.
- 15
What is the argument in your field that is not settled?
Every specialism has one and researchers enjoy being asked about it. It is also the clearest possible demonstration that geology is an active science rather than a fixed set of facts in a textbook.
- 16
What has changed since you trained?
Answers usually involve new dating techniques, satellite and lidar data, or a model that was standard teaching and is now quietly abandoned. It gives you a sense of how fast the picture moves.
- 17
What do geological maps get wrong, or leave out?
A map is interpretation drawn over sparse data, and geologists are candid about which lines are confident and which are a best guess between two boreholes. It permanently changes how you read one.
- 18
What is the part of field work nobody mentions?
Expect the weather, the driving, the insects, the paperwork, and the carrying. Worth asking if you are considering the career, and it is usually the funniest answer of the day.
- 19
What should an amateur look for near here, and where?
You get a specific place and a specific thing, which is worth more than any general advice. Ask about the rules on collecting at the same time, because some sites are protected and some landowners take a dim view.
- 20
If I wanted to learn to read this landscape myself, where would I start?
The answer is usually a local geological map, one walk done slowly, and the habit of looking at road cuttings and quarry faces. Ask what they would have you do first rather than what you ought to know.
Getting good answers out of a geologist
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
On a walk or a field trip
On a walk or a field trip
- Ask about what is in front of you rather than about geology in general. Every question here works better when there is something to point at.
- Keep bringing it back to time: how long did that take, what was here before it, what happens to it next.
- If you are given a term you do not know, ask straight away. The explanation is usually the good part, and the rest of the talk will not make sense without it.
- Hand lenses get shared. Ask to borrow one and actually look at the thing being described.
- Ask before taking anything from a site. Some are protected, some are private, and hammering an exposed face is frowned on in most places.
If you are asking about the career
If you are asking about the career
The useful questions are about proportions and paths rather than about whether the subject is interesting. Ask how much of the year is spent outdoors, what the first two years after graduating looked like, whether a masters is expected for the work they do, and which employers in the region hire at entry level. Ask what they would do differently and what part of the job they did not see coming. Geology sits between an academic subject and a set of applied trades, and people working in it are generally frank about the difference between the two, including on pay.
If you brought a rock to identify
If you brought a rock to identify
- Say where you found it and what was around it. Location does more work than the specimen, and without it many identifications are impossible.
- Take a photograph of it in place before you move it, if you still can.
- Expect a family rather than a name. Plenty of field identifications stop at a category, and going further needs a cut surface or a microscope.
- Ask what it would take to be certain. The answer tells you whether the question is answerable at all.
- Bring it with a fresh broken face if possible. A weathered outside hides almost everything useful.