In California, geology is particularly visible. I would like to see some effort put into making the visible more accessible to the public.
Let me give you some examples. There is a major freeway that goes from South San Francisco over a hill to the town of Pacifica. I’d like to see a large sign in both directions. Going West it would read: ‘Leaving the North American Plate, entering the Pacific Plate.’ Somewhere it might be possible to say “The Pacific Plate is moving North at 8 feet per century.’
At Lake Merced on the West side of San Francisco, a few hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean, I would like to see many signs saying ‘Lake Merced is a depression filled with water created by a crack spreading on the surface between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. Lake Merced emptied in the earthquake of 1864.
We have many visible folded rock outcroppings everywhere that roads have been cut through a hillside. I would like to see signs showing that some layers come from the mid Quaternary, a million years ago, some from the Pliocene 2 million years ago and that when they were formed some in California were near central Mexico and others were near Panama.
Maybe this movement of the earth would make people nervous.
I have never been able to get a science museum to have a demonstration that we have earth waves twice a day raising and lowering the surface beneath us two feet.