We were taught stalaCtite (ceiling) and stalaGmite (ground).
Stalagtites hang on tite. Stalagmites crawl on the floor like mites
I just remember g for ground and c for cats.
StalagMITEs MIGHT hang from the ceiling, but they don’t.
I always heard it as “-tite” because it hangs tight to the ceiling and “-mite” because it might poke you in the ass
Tight to the ceiling and Might grow to the ceiling here!
stroppy take: Stalactites don’t usually curve and do start out broad and grow down skinny, so really an “m” looks more like stalactites hanging from a ceiling. I’m going to have to forget I ever saw this.
Hmm I always just remembered it with “T for top”
That’s better than the one I learned in school: tits hang.
“When the mites come up the tights (-tites) come down”. -my 1980’s chem teacher
I’m 46. I can’t tell you hour long it’s been since I heard these terms. They’re completely unimportant outside of a very niche science (but, not entirely useless knowledge).
The stuff about Nutty Putty Cave plummeted my interest in caves to absolute zero (tl;dr caver ends up trapped upside down and his remains are still there and the cave has since closed, real nightmare fuel and not even the only cave it’s happened in).
Your tl;dr makes it sound like they found his body, never bothered to recover it and put a „do not enter“ sign in front of the cave.
It’s much worse than that. He was found while he was still alive and over a hundred rescuers tried to get him out until his heart couldn’t handle it anymore and he died after 27 hours. Only then they decided to leave him there, used explosives to collapse the passage to where he was stuck and then blocked all entrances with concrete.
Worse than that, they did get him out some but an equipment failure dropped him into a more compromised position
