GC Insights: “Sedimentary Rock!” – a web app that converts geological strata data into music

A web app called “Sedimentary Rock!” (https://geo.ris.ac.jp/kitazawa/SedimentaryRock/, Kitazawa et al., 2017) has been developed to reveal geological strata to human hearing and rhythmic senses, much like music, in a straightforward manner. The web app was designed and opened for non-specialists in geology. A columnar section created on the app is converted to notes and played. The thickness of a layer is converted to the length of a note, and the grain size is converted to pitch level. We converted schematic columnar sections of several environments and real Pleistocene strata from Vietnam into music and surveyed the educational effect of the web app using a questionnaire. Sedimentary Rock! makes learners understand that the strata consist of concepts of grain size and thickness of stratum, and provides a new intuitive experience to listen to geological history.