bimrock bimbo

I am a bimbo – I am a fan of bimrocks. Bimrocks are my research and professional passion. I don’t breath heavily over bimrocks, but I do find them challenging and well worth the effort I have expended on them over almost 20 years. 

I coined the odd word “bimrocks” in November 1992 for my PhD Oral Examination presentation, initially as an abbreviation for “block-in-matrix rocks“, which are complex mixtures of hard blocks of rock embedded in weak matrix rocks. So, I first came up with “bimrocks” for convenience – you try saying and writing “block-in-matrix rocks” a few times. You will stutter too. But I gave “bimrocks” respectability with a technical definition: mixtures of rocks composed of geotechnically significant blocks within a bonded matrix of finer texture.

I then a wrote a PhD dissertation on bimrocks, which you can read if you really have nothing better to do. And if you have way too much time on your hands you can trawl my bimrocks website and catch a few papers and other useful stuff.

Isn’t “bimrocks” a silly word? No: it is a serious technical term, with little geological connotation. Geology is important, but engineers generally do not understand the rich language of geology and are confused by (and even dismissive of) geological words. I coined the geologically neutral word bimrocks to focus engineers’ attentions on the fundamental and troublesome fabric of strong rock blocks in weak rock matrix, regardless of geological origins and euphonious geological names.

But “bimrocks” is not a well-known word. If you perform a web search on the word “bimrocks”, Google may suggest that you really want “bumrocks”. But you likely don’t want bumrocks since that odder, but better known (?) word is actually a music play list. Oddly: music and geology are connected in other ways- for example “rock” music.

There are a lot of other things that bimrocks are not:

• blocks in the bimrocks
• bimsteins: (pumices, or air-in-matrix)
• blokbims: (light weight building blocks made in Turkey, using pumice)
• bimbo rock(s), which is a rock music label. However, people who study bimrocks could be called bimbos (bimbeaux* et bimbelles, in French).
• bim on the rocks: a blog about 3D CAD in civil engineering (BIM is Building Information Modeling)