Honeycomb weathering and GeoLogs

Over the past five or so months my partner R. and I have slowly been exploring some of Sydney’s beaches. With neither of us being used to living in a big city, we were particularly drawn to the areas that, well, didn’t feel like a big city, and the beaches that weren’t overlooked by huge houses. Of course, some of these beaches have their own charm – just not the charm we were after.

Maroubra is probably our favourite of the beaches we’ve visited so far. The beach itself is fabulous, but it also has great rocks at either end to explore, and a path along the cliffs to the south of the beach with spectacular views through the coastal vegetation.

One of the first things we found to explore at Maroubra was the rocky headland at the north of the beach. These rocks have exquisite weathering patterns peppering their surface. Here are a few of the pictures I took.

My geology knowledge is basically non-existent, but I’m pretty sure these pictures show honeycomb weathering, otherwise known as miniature tafoni weathering, cavernous weathering, fretting, and alveoli weathering. The basic mechanism of honeycomb weathering starts with salt being deposited on the rock, in this case probably by saltwater spray or by the wind. When the salt solution begins to evaporate the salt starts to crystallise in the porous rock, separating the mineral grains and leaving the rock open to other forms of weathering. Over time, and many cycles of wetting and drying of the rock, these amazing honeycomb patterns emerge. Honeycomb weathering isn’t just limited to coastal cliff faces, but can occur on building stones, in hot deserts, and at the poles. There is even some evidence of honeycomb weathering on Mars [1].

I've featured these rock patterns at Maroubra on one refillable notebook so far, and am planning on further books all featuring different pictures of the rocks. R. suggested a great name for these books: GeoLogs.

[1] C. Rodriguez-Navarro, "Evidence of honeycomb weathering on Mars", Geophysical Research Letters, 25, 3249-3252, 1998.

New products

In my last post I talked about spirals and sunflowers. Well, here are some sneak peeks of new products which feature this design. Any ideas what the pieces are?

They will be available in the next few days at www.madeit.com.au/IdeaLiza and www.bluecaravan.net/idealiza

Spirals and sunflowers

The patterns in the centre of a sunflower are visually spectacular, but also very clever. The pattern consists of interlocking spirals, with the number of left and right spirals being successive Fibonacci numbers. This particular pattern creates an extremely efficient way of packing in florets. Evolution has hit on this pattern numerous times; it is also seen in pinecones, pineapples, waratahs, the position of leaves on a stem…

Mathematically, the position of each floret is given by:

where the golden angle is 137.508 degrees, and i is the head number. I wrote a little matlab program to plot  these positions, and the result for 200 heads is shown below.

This pattern became one of my first designs, and has also made it into my logo. There are several reasons why I think it is fitting to have this pattern in my logo. Firstly, it is a great example of the connections between science and nature, which intrigue me. Secondly, I love the analogy of an idea germinating and growing, and having a representation of something that physically germinates and grows is apt. And thirdly, I’ve spent most of my adult life working in solar energy, and having something that not only looks sunny and is called sunflower, but that the leaves and buds of the plant track the sun across the sky, seems fitting. And as a final note, those who know me will probably be very familiar with how grumpy I get during days without sunshine – following the sun seems like a wise choice for me!

Beginnings

I’m not really sure when IdeaLiza began. I guess the thought of being able to focus more on designing, making, creating – whatever you want to call it – has been rolling around in my head for several years now. But several changes over the past year have encouraged me to try to turn that thought into reality. I’m not really sure what that reality is going to look like, but I’m enjoying the process of bringing it into being! I plan on using this blog to document how, why, and what I create.