UNDERFOOT NOTES / Sheet 1 of ∞ / Scale 1:1 boots
Clear answers about the ground we walk on, from pebbles to plate boundaries.
surveyor: Senior Explainer, Earth
Moana grew up skipping stones on a South Island riverbed and still can't walk past a gravel bar without looking at what's in it. She likes to explain things one small step at a time, and she's quick to say that a retired farmer taught her to read the layers in a bank. She is still learning something new every time she crouches down.
0 cm
19 February 2026 · 11 min
Volcanoes aren't scattered at random. Most sit where one tectonic plate dives beneath another, or where a plate slides over a long-lived source of heat. Here is the step-by-step picture, with a little arithmetic and a few honest "we're not sure yet" moments.
30 cm
13 September 2025 · 7 min
Nobody measured the Earth's age with a single clever test. It took centuries of looking at rock layers, one wrong-but-careful estimate, and the discovery that atoms keep time. Here's how the pieces fit together.