science-y stuff

phew... still plugging on this foreland reconstruction. for those of you not on the up and up with my daily research progess, my current project entails reconstructing the kinematic history of the taiwanese foreland (literally the land in front of the mountains) for the last ~2 million years in the region directly west (or tectonically 'in front') of my study area, Puli. the idea is that in order to know where things are going, one has to know where they've been. it all involves a lot of pseudo-3D geometry and eye-crossing. by pseudo-3D, i mean that i'm using 2D constructions, based in different (orthogonal) coordinate systems and trying to kind of mesh them together. think of two pieces of paper, each with something drawn on them, each one penetrating the plane of the other at a right angle. the combined drawings on each sheet defining the structure of an object within its respective plane, giving a 'pseudo-3D' rendering of what that object looks like in real life. this isn't supposed to sound like plato's allegory of the cave... it's less abstract than that.



...hopefully.

~t