UNDERFOOT NOTES / Sheet 1 of ∞ / Scale 1:1 boots
Clear answers about the ground we walk on, from pebbles to plate boundaries.
surveyor: Writer, Life
Priya got into geology by way of earthworms, after wondering where all the garden soil came from. She likes joining up ideas from different fields and often admits her first guesses were wrong. She hopes her pieces make you want to turn over a leaf and have a peek.
0 cm
27 June 2026 · 13 min
Nobody has ever drilled anywhere near the Earth's centre, yet we know it has a liquid outer core and a solid inner one. The answer is a century of detective work, using the way earthquake waves bend, slow down and disappear on their way through the planet.
30 cm
13 July 2025 · 10 min
Every rock you pick up has a life story, and nearly all of them fit one of three plots: cooled from melt, pressed from settled bits, or changed by heat and squeezing. Here's how to read the clues in your own hand, and why the "families" are really one long loop.
60 cm
2 June 2025 · 5 min
Start with the grass or gravel under your feet and keep going, through soil, rock, crust, mantle and core, all the way to the centre of the Earth. Along the way: how we know what's down there when nobody has ever been anywhere near it.
90 cm
7 April 2025 · 7 min
Rain tastes of nothing much, rivers taste of very little, and yet the sea is properly salty. The answer lies in what a raindrop picks up on its way down and what evaporation leaves behind.