In Transit

I had a Geology tutorial today. Most Saturdays involve a tutorial or Day School somewhere or another, usually involving a journey of between 10 - 70 miles by public transport. It has got to the point when I could probably recreate the network map on the back of an envelope whilst explaining the vagaries of the Carbon Cycle to anyone daft enough to ask me how it works.

In four hours, we covered 460 million years. After a ten minute break (punctuated by too much bad coffee) we had ninety minutes to introduce quarks and anti-quarks and a very detailed explanation of the history of quantum theory. The shift in scale from the continental to the sub-atomic was, well - interesting.

It seems only fitting that the actions of smaller, faster moving particles - photons and electrons - are used to communicate to others the results of larger processes - sedimentation, lithification, metamorphosis - and the largest part of the image - the clouds - is formed of many, many tiny particles. Everything moving, ever changing, over milliseconds, over millennia, always in transit from one state to another.

I have sympathy for them.