Where Am I?

[John L]

0

Of course I know what you mean. You were talking about a four sided structure that is more or less equal each side. What I was trying to get you to do was to think about your statement and then do some checking up on it.

To the best of my knowledge, I have never seen a four sided basalt column that was a square by nature. All I ever remember is that they were always five sided(pentagon), although I have read somewhere that they can come in six sides(hexagon). So I went and Googled basalt columns and came up with a bunch of photos. You can see them right here. If you look at them from the end, they are five sided, and there is a reason for this. Four sides are not able to interlock to the extent that five, or even six, sided columns can. And since nature tends to take the simplest approach, the five sides are the most common.

And too, there are more than columnar basalt, but running basalt will just flow as a blob, and not be columnar. So they are not square, pentagon, or hexagon in that case.

Here's what I mean:



Or how about this:



For what its worth, I was just trying to get your curiosity juices flowing.