Nick Zentner

Nick Zentner teaches geology at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, in the USA. His channel shares that teaching with everyone, from short field clips to long talks.

Many videos are filmed outdoors at real rock outcrops, rivers and glaciers. He often brings in other geologists as guests and talks through what they are looking at. There are quick explainers in his “2 Minute Geology” series and longer, map-led lectures that piece together the history of a region. The style is relaxed, curious and easy to follow, even without a science background.

Some highlights include:

A long lecture traces a hidden fault buried beneath the Canadian Rockies and how geologists worked out that it was there.

A session on the eruption at Kilauea in Hawaii explains what was happening at the volcano and why.

A trip to the volcanoes around Bend, Oregon, with two guest geologists, shows how the area’s landscape was built.

The channel has around 142,000 subscribers.

Geology sits right underneath civil and geotechnical engineering. Engineers who design tunnels, dams, bridges and foundations need to understand faults, rock types and how the ground behaves. This channel is a gentle way to build that understanding, and it shows how much detective work goes into reading a landscape. His long lectures also show how scientists build an argument from scattered evidence, which is a useful skill for anyone starting out in engineering.