Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Geology reference alert!

House is on, and our favorite misanthropic doctor just made a comment about mineralogy. And what's even better? One of the other doctors understood it.
[Yak yak yak how do we find this tumor if we can't bring the guy to the hospital and have only limited equipment...]
House: "What part of olivine, pyroxene and amphibole don't you understand?"
[Blank stares]
Cameron: "They're indicator minerals. You can't see diamonds so you look for the indicator minerals."
Woohoo! Geology metaphors strike again! (Although this one is kind of in reverse, but still, it's cool. I did a little happy dance when I heard it a few minutes ago.)

4 comments:

Lockwood said...

I can relate. Any time anyone says anything that can be constued as related to geology (even misconstrued as related to geology) I can't help but jump in. But you don't very often hear such references on TV. In reality though... Do kimberlites really have much amphibole? How many doctors would recognize any of those mineral familes, let alone associate them with diamonds?

C W Magee said...

Hopefully none, since nobody who looks for indicator minerals uses any of those (except for chrome diopside).

Jessica Ball said...

Darn. I was iffy on the amphibole, but I thought olivine and pyroxene were pretty reasonable indicators of mantle material.

Elli said...

Well, according to the Canadians: olivine works as well.