science

Mount Ritchie

Mount Ritchie is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mount Ritchie rather than just read about it. In short: Mount Ritchie (78°32′S 158°25′E) is a mountain rising over 1600 m in the southeast part of Warren Range, Antarctica. The feature is 5.6 km (3 nmi) northeast of Wise Peak on the west side of Deception Glacier.

Key takeaways

Mount Ritchie belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mount Ritchie to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mount Ritchie from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mount Ritchie (78°32′S 158°25′E) is a mountain rising over 1600 m in the southeast part of Warren Range, Antarctica. The feature is 5.6 km (3 nmi) northeast of Wise Peak on the west side of Deception Glacier. It was named by the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE), 1970–71, after Alex Ritchie, curator of fossils at the Australian Museum, Sydney, a member of the VUWAE party that discovered important sites of fossil fish in this Skelton Neve area.

Geology Mount Ritchie consists of a thick sequence of well-exposed, sedimentary strata of the Beacon Supergroup capped by a summit composed of an erosional remnant of a dolerite sill belonging to the Ferrar Dolerite sills. The dolerite summit of Mount Ritchie is underlain by 250 metres (820 ft) of the Weller Coal Measures. It is composed of fossiliferous interbedded Permian sandstone, siltstone, shale, and coal. This geologic unit was deposited by ancient braided rivers and streams. Beneath the Weller Coal Measures lies as much as 85 metres (279 ft) of Metschel Tillite. It consists of glacial diamictite, sandstone, and shale. At and just above the contact with undeformed strata of the underlying Aztec Siltstone, the Metschel Tillite is deformed into textbook, imbricately stacked, soft-sediment thrust sheets up to 15 metres (49 ft) thick. These thrust sheets were caused by the north-eastward advance of grounded ice into a glaciomarine setting during a Late Paleozoic icehouse glacial epoch. Underlying the Metschel Tillite and forming the base of Mount Ritchie is over 217 metres (712 ft) of late Devonian Aztec Siltstone. It consists of locally fossiliferous, interbedded shale, siltstone, and crossbedded sandstone of which the upper few meters are locally deformed by glaciotectonic deformation. Typically, the siltstones and shales range from a few centimeters to several meters thick. The sandstones vary in thickness between 0.1 and 15 metres (0.33 and 49.21 ft). These sedimentary strata contain calcrete, fining-upward cycles, red beds, rootlet horizons, mudcracks, and conchostracan fossils, which indicates that they were deposited in floodplains and channels of rivers and streams.

Fossils Mount Ritchie is an important late Devonian vertebrate fossil site in Antarctica. On Mount Ritchie, the Aztec Siltstone has yielded a varied fauna of fossil vertebrates and conchostracans. The vertebrate fossils include a set of acanthodid acanthodiform jaws (Gyracanthides ?), placoderms (Bothriolepis macphersoni and Pambulaspis antarctica), and other fossil fish. In addition, abundant fossil fish were excavated from near the top of the Aztec Siltstone, including Bothriolepis, Groenlandaspis, and Turinia gondwana. Associated with these fossil fish were palynomorphs including Geminospora lemurata. Among the researchers who have collected and studied fossil vertebrates from Mount Ritchie include the eponymous A. Ritchie. The Wellner Coal Measures at Mount Ritchie contain abundant Permian leaf, root, petrified wood, and other plant fossils.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mount Ritchie

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mount Ritchie claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mount Ritchie before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mount Ritchie ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mount Ritchie

In research: Mount Ritchie appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mount Ritchie in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mount Ritchie is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Mountains of Oates Land, Paleontological sites of Antarctica, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mount Ritchie outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mount Ritchie in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mount Ritchie means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mount Ritchie out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mount Ritchie in simple terms?

Why does Mount Ritchie matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mount Ritchie?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mount Ritchie.