Don't pay enough attention to this thing. Probably a chicken and egg problem in which I don't have many readers so I don't make a habit of updating, which means I don't have many readers, which leads to . . .
You get the point.
Been a busy summer. Bought a hybrid bike, went to Wisconsin, learned building was condemned, found I LOVE road biking, blasted up to the Cabin, moved my office 3 times (shouldn't have to move again), did field work in Colorado, started processing a substantial number of my samples, nearly re-fractured my hand as a result of biking, pulled at least one major social gaffe, actually went to the movie theatre SEVERAL times, was maid of honor at a close friend's wedding, registered and submitted an abstract to a national conference, spent too much money on upgrades to the bike (but will save plenty thanks to the find of Dad's old clipless pedals in the garage), upgraded, cleaned, and tuned the bike, and undoubtedly a few other random things. Heading up to the Cabin this Saturday as soon as I take care of a doctor's appointment in Detroit. After that, I get to move into my apartment (FINALLY!!) and attempt to get my trombonesmanship up to par enough to land a spot in one of the university bands.
Whew. School is going to be somewhat of a vacation from this summer.
Oh yes, and the class thing. That starts again, and am thoroughly looking forward to it. Taking a methods class and an isotopes class. Scientific writing is only made easy through lots of practice and good feedback (really, though, what isn't?), and I requested that we do a bit of that if possible in the methods class. I doubt I'd be the only one in that class who would benefit from said practice. There are certain advantages to having your advisor as a professor!
Past that, I could probably bore what people actually do stop by to read this thing occasionally with what I've learned about cycling this summer. The important part is that I've set a goal of doing a century ride (100 miles) next spring. Haven't picked out the event yet - that will probably happen early in 2011. Based on the light base training I've done so far, my knees should hold up okay, and with the new equipment I shouldn't have anywhere near as much trouble with my hands. I've already had one "expert" tell me that a century on a hybrid isn't possible, but everything I've read so far points to the fitness of the rider rather than the superiority of the equipment (but it does help to have a decent setup).
So that's my summer in a nutshell.
Showing posts with label geology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geology. Show all posts
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Quakes!
Magnitude 4.9 earthquake in Utah.
Northern Utah on the UT-WY border. Felt reports coming into the USGS are currently from as far south as American Fork, UT and as far west as the Great Salt Lake. This isn't a major one, and no idea of any damage yet. It's of interest because it's an intraplate earthquake, despite it being not-unexpected because of its location in the far-east end of the Basin and Range Province.
A group called Earthscope was hopefully able to pick up some good data from this quake. I mention them specifically because they held a small conference on campus earlier this week. Regrettably, I was only able to attend one session - it was absolutely fascinating! The discussions on seismology and tectonic work, as well as their goal of setting up a high-res seismic array in North America is a fascinating listen. I can't even imagine what such a network will do for tomography underneath the North American Plate.
In other news, was on a field trip last weekend and am leaving for another tomorrow at noon. St. Francois Mountains or bust!
Northern Utah on the UT-WY border. Felt reports coming into the USGS are currently from as far south as American Fork, UT and as far west as the Great Salt Lake. This isn't a major one, and no idea of any damage yet. It's of interest because it's an intraplate earthquake, despite it being not-unexpected because of its location in the far-east end of the Basin and Range Province.
A group called Earthscope was hopefully able to pick up some good data from this quake. I mention them specifically because they held a small conference on campus earlier this week. Regrettably, I was only able to attend one session - it was absolutely fascinating! The discussions on seismology and tectonic work, as well as their goal of setting up a high-res seismic array in North America is a fascinating listen. I can't even imagine what such a network will do for tomography underneath the North American Plate.
In other news, was on a field trip last weekend and am leaving for another tomorrow at noon. St. Francois Mountains or bust!
Monday, March 29, 2010
MSU in Final Four and Back To The Grind
Got back to the home base yesterday afternoon in time for the second half of the MSU-Tennesee game, which I'd been tuning into for the last hour or so of my drive.
If I can get tickets at a reasonable price, I'm hoping to be able to watch the games in person, seeing as I live a mere hour and a half from Indianapolis. Chances are that I will not be successful in my quest, but it NEVER hurts to try.
In the meantime, we're starting the second major unit of the class I help run, and the camping trip is next week. Need to get plans solidifed, since it's highly likely I'll ultimately have to plan all of the underlying infrastructural parts of the trip (things like food, propane, etc.). Working for this prof certainly has been interesting, and not really something I want to do again.
If I can get tickets at a reasonable price, I'm hoping to be able to watch the games in person, seeing as I live a mere hour and a half from Indianapolis. Chances are that I will not be successful in my quest, but it NEVER hurts to try.
In the meantime, we're starting the second major unit of the class I help run, and the camping trip is next week. Need to get plans solidifed, since it's highly likely I'll ultimately have to plan all of the underlying infrastructural parts of the trip (things like food, propane, etc.). Working for this prof certainly has been interesting, and not really something I want to do again.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Snowball Earth Proven?
Snowball Earth is a popular, controversial idea in which Earth is thought to have been completely covered at least once in ice during the Sturtian glaciation of roughly 718-700 Ma. This glaciation episode, bookended by two others, the Kaigas (~785-728 Ma) and the Marinoan (~670-624 Ma), comprise the period of the Late Precambrian known as the Cryogenian Period and are a precursor to the Cambrian Explosion of roughly 530 Ma.
This is proposed as a hypothesis to explain some sediments seen worldwide that some geologists are having trouble characterizing any other way. Glacially-associated sediments are distinct from the more common wind- and water-driven deposits. Because of the viscosity of ice, it is capable of carrying sediments of varying grain size from dust to megaboulder. Some sediments are sorted out during melting into eskers or loess, but other sediments are dropped where they are when the glacier starts to melt. Advance/retreat periods during melting can push up ridges of unsorted sediments at the glacier head known as moraines.
Skeptics of the hypothesis argue that there are problems with the idea of worldwide glaciation, and their arguments are very well-founded. Those of us who see snow every year are aware of how bright the world can get when snow is on the ground and the sun is shining. This is because snow and ice have a high albedo, or ability to reflect light. If light is reflected rather than absorbed, not much energy is available at surface level to melt snow or ice. It's possible that runaway glaciation would be VERY hard to reverse once established simply because of the albedo argument. I believe some models back this up. Others don't. It's controversial, which is what makes it a compelling story of Earth's past.
There are other arguments, but I strongly suggest reading through the Wikipedia article linked at the top of this post. It's fascinating.
Sediments such as these have been observed in paleoequatorial regions. Using paleomagnetic data embedded in rocks (that hasn't been too far altered by subsequent metamorphic processes), it is possible to extrapolate a paleolatitude of a particular rock formation. This is done by isolating the remanent magnetic signature (thought of as a vector) in the native Fe2O3 (hematite), Fe3O4 (magnetite), and FeTiO4 (ilmenite) crystals present in a rock. Alignment may occur in the internal structure of a crystal during cooling and crystallization of an igneous rock (if it has enough time), or during deposition of iron-bearing sedimentary rocks (if the magnetic field has enough influence to align enough of the grains in situ). If it is possible to establish an age for these same rocks, we know when that piece of continent was at that particular latitude (but NOT the longitude, because assuming a perfect magnetic dipole, the magnetic vector is the same at all longitudes at that latitude).
Better yet if you find glacial sediments hanging out in close association with rock types typically found in tropical environments. Uniformitarianism for the win.
That's what scientists have managed to do with a suite of rocks in northwestern Canada. Tropical sediments and presumably paleomagnetic data (not directly mentioned in the article) were used to identify what could be a smoking gun for Snowball Earth.
As a corollary, some glacial sediments are now found at tropical latitudes, but that plus paleomag provides a smoking gun in favor of plate tectonics. Typical glaciations throughout Earth's history were not at the level of the Cryogenian glaciations.
This is proposed as a hypothesis to explain some sediments seen worldwide that some geologists are having trouble characterizing any other way. Glacially-associated sediments are distinct from the more common wind- and water-driven deposits. Because of the viscosity of ice, it is capable of carrying sediments of varying grain size from dust to megaboulder. Some sediments are sorted out during melting into eskers or loess, but other sediments are dropped where they are when the glacier starts to melt. Advance/retreat periods during melting can push up ridges of unsorted sediments at the glacier head known as moraines.
Skeptics of the hypothesis argue that there are problems with the idea of worldwide glaciation, and their arguments are very well-founded. Those of us who see snow every year are aware of how bright the world can get when snow is on the ground and the sun is shining. This is because snow and ice have a high albedo, or ability to reflect light. If light is reflected rather than absorbed, not much energy is available at surface level to melt snow or ice. It's possible that runaway glaciation would be VERY hard to reverse once established simply because of the albedo argument. I believe some models back this up. Others don't. It's controversial, which is what makes it a compelling story of Earth's past.
There are other arguments, but I strongly suggest reading through the Wikipedia article linked at the top of this post. It's fascinating.
Sediments such as these have been observed in paleoequatorial regions. Using paleomagnetic data embedded in rocks (that hasn't been too far altered by subsequent metamorphic processes), it is possible to extrapolate a paleolatitude of a particular rock formation. This is done by isolating the remanent magnetic signature (thought of as a vector) in the native Fe2O3 (hematite), Fe3O4 (magnetite), and FeTiO4 (ilmenite) crystals present in a rock. Alignment may occur in the internal structure of a crystal during cooling and crystallization of an igneous rock (if it has enough time), or during deposition of iron-bearing sedimentary rocks (if the magnetic field has enough influence to align enough of the grains in situ). If it is possible to establish an age for these same rocks, we know when that piece of continent was at that particular latitude (but NOT the longitude, because assuming a perfect magnetic dipole, the magnetic vector is the same at all longitudes at that latitude).
Better yet if you find glacial sediments hanging out in close association with rock types typically found in tropical environments. Uniformitarianism for the win.
That's what scientists have managed to do with a suite of rocks in northwestern Canada. Tropical sediments and presumably paleomagnetic data (not directly mentioned in the article) were used to identify what could be a smoking gun for Snowball Earth.
As a corollary, some glacial sediments are now found at tropical latitudes, but that plus paleomag provides a smoking gun in favor of plate tectonics. Typical glaciations throughout Earth's history were not at the level of the Cryogenian glaciations.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Good Morning!
This was one of the forms of entertainment of choice at field camp - the dreaded Flash Bang. During periods of downtime and carbo-loading, it was discovered fairly early on that the sighting mirrors of our compasses, particularly those of the Brunton brand, reflected sunlight REALLY well across large distances. (This is also very handy to know for potential field emergencies in which signaling across large distances would be required. Let's hope my buddies and I never have this problem in future excursions.)
This turned into a game and it ultimately became hard for large groups to eat lunch together as we'd all end up flashbanging each other. My favorites were when we could get someone when they were about 1000 ft. away, usually on the other side of a basin or canyon that we were mapping.
The other dominant form of entertainment was the fabled "Suck Bomb," in which someone called out the target victim's name to grab his or her attention. The victim's typical answer is, "What?" The reply would then be, "SUCKS!"
Not really sure which is the more mature of the two, but both are funny. With the latter, people figured out pretty quickly when they were about to receive a suck bomb. If they heard their name called, some would figure it out and instead of "What?" we'd get a "F**k you!" with a giant grin on their face.
A short-lived practice was something some of the boys invented, called "Pass the Rock." Pretty self-explanatory. The trick was that the rock generally had absolutely nothing to do with the lecture going on at the time, but they wanted to see how long it'd get passed around and inspected. People figured that one out within a couple of weeks, I think, after it became frequent and rather obvious.
Back into the present and we find no soy milk in my fridge, so no pancakes this morning. Bummer. I'll probably do eggs again today. Thunderstorms are expected, my running buddy's bike is in need of maintenance (tire blew, so my inefficiently-running arse can't join her today on her 7-miler), and I have grading to blast through. Should be a quiet day, which I'm totally in favor of, and anything could be more productive than yesterday. About the only things I managed to do yesterday were to make/eat breakfast while it was still early, get out for an hourlong walk in the residental section of Urbana (GORGEOUS - saw some crocuses!), wash the pile of dishes I've let build up for a while after 11 pm, then attempted to stay up to watch a movie and fell asleep less than halfway through.
And I'm off to be along with it. Peace out.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
I Love Geology, Yes I Do!
It's a monocline that looks like a SHIP! I hope everyone else sees that too!
This is a picture from the start of the San Rafael Swell in Utah. A monocline is sort of like an anticline (convex fold), except it only has one leg. It tells us that the area was undergoing some sort of uneven compression that caused one side to kink up and form a leg, while the other side slooooowly tapers downward to gradually merge with the rest of the Colorado Plateau. Note that this area is only a tiny part of the Swell itself. When we camped on the monocline in 2008, we were only still part of civilization in that we were staying in a campground. No facilities or water, though - we had to bring everything in and pack it all out.
One of the cool things we discussed at field camp while we were camping up on the Swell is that evidence of hydrocarbons exists in the sandstone beds of the monocline. Before erosive forces carved out the Little Grand Canyon and other features, this has been interpreted to be one of the largest hydrocarbon reservoirs ever to have existed. If I remember correctly, it was thought to contain more barrels of oil than sources in Saudi Arabia. Once the entrapping rocks were cut through during erosion, though, the hydrocarbons drained away to who-knows-where. They're long gone and broken down.
I'll dig out a few more photos with time. I've taken a TON of pictures on my field excursions in the past couple of years, downloaded them, looked at a few, and forgotten about more than I've looked at. Perhaps a massive reorganization/cataloguing project is in order.
Or, knowing me, maybe not! Regardless, I've been coming across some fun shots with stories behind them and it would be only best if I were to share them.
This is a picture from the start of the San Rafael Swell in Utah. A monocline is sort of like an anticline (convex fold), except it only has one leg. It tells us that the area was undergoing some sort of uneven compression that caused one side to kink up and form a leg, while the other side slooooowly tapers downward to gradually merge with the rest of the Colorado Plateau. Note that this area is only a tiny part of the Swell itself. When we camped on the monocline in 2008, we were only still part of civilization in that we were staying in a campground. No facilities or water, though - we had to bring everything in and pack it all out.
One of the cool things we discussed at field camp while we were camping up on the Swell is that evidence of hydrocarbons exists in the sandstone beds of the monocline. Before erosive forces carved out the Little Grand Canyon and other features, this has been interpreted to be one of the largest hydrocarbon reservoirs ever to have existed. If I remember correctly, it was thought to contain more barrels of oil than sources in Saudi Arabia. Once the entrapping rocks were cut through during erosion, though, the hydrocarbons drained away to who-knows-where. They're long gone and broken down.
I'll dig out a few more photos with time. I've taken a TON of pictures on my field excursions in the past couple of years, downloaded them, looked at a few, and forgotten about more than I've looked at. Perhaps a massive reorganization/cataloguing project is in order.
Or, knowing me, maybe not! Regardless, I've been coming across some fun shots with stories behind them and it would be only best if I were to share them.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Excitement and Arm-Waving
Had possibly one of the most exciting meetings ever this afternoon!
There's not much in terms of detail since things are only in the barest of planning stages, but what I can say is that it's a collaborative effort with one of the other research groups in the department and if things end up as interesting as we suspect, and better yet if we can develop some new models, this could be VERY important research.
In other news, I'm writing another lecture to have ready for Monday's lab. Some of the information the prof conveyed in lecture this morning was anything but correct, and unfortunately the students won't realize that. I nearly broke the Rules of Conduct (my own personal rules, sort of coupled with some of the admittedly strange rules I have to stay aware of in the academic world. They certainly have their logic, but they can sometimes be counterproductive) during lecture when she said what she did. Took every ounce of willpower to not say anything, and I'm glad I didn't.
[I'm not mentioning any specifics about class, etc. so as to preserve identities.]
I'll let her know, but it wouldn't have been proper to call that error out during lecture. However, at the same time I'm concerned that the level of education my students are receiving from this class isn't satisfactory. This means I'm taking into my hands a large portion of their education. It's more work than I should have as a TA (never mind I'm the ONLY TA in the department who has only one lab to teach. Yes, my subject is that hard to teach), and I shouldn't be responsible for teaching fundamentals.
However, it appears that it usually comes to that for those who TA this class. When a glaring error (omitted chapter that was rather essential to the lab I ran Monday) cropped up last week, I was fuming mad about it. I wrote a lecture and even managed to pull it off and have some of the info stick in my students' heads, even. That's a huge accomplishment, given the rough time I had last semester when I was trying to teach intro geology lab to non-geology majors.
In addition to that, I graded the first lab quiz of the semester and it taught me a lot. I know where their deficiencies are and that helps me tailor what I need to cover in lab to help them learn. You can't learn this subject without solid fundamentals, and regrettably those are not always properly covered in lecture. I even managed to show them how to solve ternary phase diagrams. *smug grin*
This is going to be a tough semester, but in a manner different from last semester. It will be a challenge to stay on top of the material covered in class. It will be a challenge to keep encouraging my students to read the book (been there, was terrible about reading too). It will be a challenge to master the fundamentals behind the methods, and convey the concepts in a manner that my students can understand. This subject is tough enough when taught well, and I can't imagine how my students feel right now, because they KNOW the prof is lacking somewhat.
That is my challenge. My confidence in my ability to teach has soared somewhat since Monday's personal triumph, and I'm hoping I can carry that energy over into the coming lab.
. . . I need a shower. Did my first spin class with a friend tonight, and it was loads of fun. Recommend it - feel great now, wondering how well I'll be moving tomorrow!
There's not much in terms of detail since things are only in the barest of planning stages, but what I can say is that it's a collaborative effort with one of the other research groups in the department and if things end up as interesting as we suspect, and better yet if we can develop some new models, this could be VERY important research.
In other news, I'm writing another lecture to have ready for Monday's lab. Some of the information the prof conveyed in lecture this morning was anything but correct, and unfortunately the students won't realize that. I nearly broke the Rules of Conduct (my own personal rules, sort of coupled with some of the admittedly strange rules I have to stay aware of in the academic world. They certainly have their logic, but they can sometimes be counterproductive) during lecture when she said what she did. Took every ounce of willpower to not say anything, and I'm glad I didn't.
[I'm not mentioning any specifics about class, etc. so as to preserve identities.]
I'll let her know, but it wouldn't have been proper to call that error out during lecture. However, at the same time I'm concerned that the level of education my students are receiving from this class isn't satisfactory. This means I'm taking into my hands a large portion of their education. It's more work than I should have as a TA (never mind I'm the ONLY TA in the department who has only one lab to teach. Yes, my subject is that hard to teach), and I shouldn't be responsible for teaching fundamentals.
However, it appears that it usually comes to that for those who TA this class. When a glaring error (omitted chapter that was rather essential to the lab I ran Monday) cropped up last week, I was fuming mad about it. I wrote a lecture and even managed to pull it off and have some of the info stick in my students' heads, even. That's a huge accomplishment, given the rough time I had last semester when I was trying to teach intro geology lab to non-geology majors.
In addition to that, I graded the first lab quiz of the semester and it taught me a lot. I know where their deficiencies are and that helps me tailor what I need to cover in lab to help them learn. You can't learn this subject without solid fundamentals, and regrettably those are not always properly covered in lecture. I even managed to show them how to solve ternary phase diagrams. *smug grin*
This is going to be a tough semester, but in a manner different from last semester. It will be a challenge to stay on top of the material covered in class. It will be a challenge to keep encouraging my students to read the book (been there, was terrible about reading too). It will be a challenge to master the fundamentals behind the methods, and convey the concepts in a manner that my students can understand. This subject is tough enough when taught well, and I can't imagine how my students feel right now, because they KNOW the prof is lacking somewhat.
That is my challenge. My confidence in my ability to teach has soared somewhat since Monday's personal triumph, and I'm hoping I can carry that energy over into the coming lab.
. . . I need a shower. Did my first spin class with a friend tonight, and it was loads of fun. Recommend it - feel great now, wondering how well I'll be moving tomorrow!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
100 Things Meme Stolen From http://harmonictremors.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
The ones I've done/seen are in bold. Comments are in italic.
1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier - Seen some cirqes and glacial valleys
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland - Old Faithful and Steamboat, plus a few other unnamed ones near Yellowstone Lake.
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta. - Driven over it a few times, but have never stopped and looked for iridium-red layers.
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia) Been to Carlsbad, NM and Cueva del Hato, Curaçao
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile. Visited a rehabilitating open pit mine in Elko, NV
8. Explore a subsurface mine.
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw. Hiked several in Death Valley
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere.
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada. - Maybe. I've definitely seen a lot of Sierra Nevada laccoliths.
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland. - Does writing an emergency LMI lecture count?
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate.
16. A gingko tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic. There are several on the street where my mom lives
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones) Marquette, MI
18. A field of glacial erratics
19. A caldera - Yellowstone plus just about all of the San Juan calderas, also known as my master's project field area.
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high - I think the big one in Death Valley's about that large. If not, it's close.
21. A fjord
22. A recently formed fault scarp Outside of SLC, UT, if within the past 200ish years counts
23. A megabreccia
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge Natural Bridge, IN and the Natural Bridge in Death Valley (want to say it's related to Golden Canyon??)
26. A large sinkhole
27. A glacial outwash plain
28. A sea stack
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide - Hiked up above the treeline in June 2009 and saw Uncompahgre Peak about ten miles off. There are some incredible views in the Divide region of the San Juans and Colorado. Also drove across it numerous times on the way to and from field camp.
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals We have more than a few in my building, given IL's state mineral is fluorite!
33. Petrified trees Not in-situ - pulled some out of some rock layers out West and we have part of a tree trunk in NHB
34. Lava tubes Snow Canyon, UT and a small one preserved in the Precambrian(!) basalts of Mamainse Point
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. Little Grand Canyon of the San Rafael Swell doesn't count, does it?
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible - Been to Upheaval Dome, which I think was recently discovered to harbor shocked quartz . . .
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe. Been once, going back in May and VERY excited for it!
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing - WANT TO!!!
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below. - Close(ish) - been to "Dante's View" at about 5600 feet. Gorgeous.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism.
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn". Have seen the "Matterhorn" in the San Juans!
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley - Still sad we couldn't talk our petrologist emeritus extraordinaire to let us go!
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah - Better yet in early March, when it was cold, windy, a bit snowy, and outright miserable, which meant we got the most INCREDIBLE shots because no one else was crazy enough to be there when we were!
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
66. Bryce Canyon - Seen it from afar. It was still too cold/snowy at its elevation to make a visit there worthwhile.
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone - While a storm was moving into Yellowstone. Pulled off some gorgeous shots that afternoon as well as a nearly flawless pan of the Spring!
68. Monument Valley
69. The San Andreas fault
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event - Mapped a crapton of landslides in the Wasatch-Uintas during field camp!
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park - Aeolian deposits and they are STUNNING!
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0. - Technically yes; woke up the morning of the Illinois earthquake in 2008, but don't remember which time I woke up specifically to some strange stimulus. I was in East Lansing, MI at the time.
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ - Nope, just the teaching sample from GEOL 107
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil) - Got a bitty-bite on a field trip I drove for last semester, but left it in the university SUV. : ( Good thing I still have a map to that locale!
85. Find gold, however small the flake - I don't think the gold-, silver-, and pyrite-bearing vein material we were allowed to poke around in during a field camp project counts . . .
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall - If I were to experience this, it's probably mean I was too close to the eruption!
88. Experience a sandstorm - Seen a few dust devils outside of Vegas. : D
89. See a tsunami - Totally counting watching the tsunami-cams from CBS Hilo yesterday!
90. Witness a total solar eclipse - Almost. We had a near-total eclipse during school when I was in second grade. I got to watch the whole thing because my mom is awesome and brought in material to allow my class to watch it safely.
91. Witness a tornado firsthand. Unfortunately no, but it's one of my life's goals. I've seen a couple of funnel/wall clouds and an actual DOUBLE ANVIL cloud east of the Front Range in Colorado.
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower - This sounds awesome!
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope. Have seen Saturn, plus Jupiter and the four Galilean moons. Awesomeness.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights. Thought it was a cloud refracting a remnant of sunlight till my dad recognized it for what it was.
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century Hyakutake in 1996 and Hale-Bopp in 1997.
96. See a lunar eclipse - Seen several; one during Sparty Watch
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope - Finally saw Andromeda with naked eye in Big Bend National Park almost exactly a year ago!!
98. Experience a hurricane
99. See noctilucent clouds - Think I have a couple of times; once during a night drive to the U.P. which couldn't be explained by anything else.
100. See the green flash - Been watching Lake Superior sunsets most of my life, watching for the Green Flash. Finally saw one in Curaçao and had a massive geekgasm in front of EVERYONE. If I remember correctly, the trip videographer caught the entire sunset on camera and hopefully didn't have the microphone on!
1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier - Seen some cirqes and glacial valleys
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland - Old Faithful and Steamboat, plus a few other unnamed ones near Yellowstone Lake.
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta. - Driven over it a few times, but have never stopped and looked for iridium-red layers.
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia) Been to Carlsbad, NM and Cueva del Hato, Curaçao
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile. Visited a rehabilitating open pit mine in Elko, NV
8. Explore a subsurface mine.
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw. Hiked several in Death Valley
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere.
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada. - Maybe. I've definitely seen a lot of Sierra Nevada laccoliths.
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland. - Does writing an emergency LMI lecture count?
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate.
16. A gingko tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic. There are several on the street where my mom lives
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones) Marquette, MI
18. A field of glacial erratics
19. A caldera - Yellowstone plus just about all of the San Juan calderas, also known as my master's project field area.
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high - I think the big one in Death Valley's about that large. If not, it's close.
21. A fjord
22. A recently formed fault scarp Outside of SLC, UT, if within the past 200ish years counts
23. A megabreccia
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge Natural Bridge, IN and the Natural Bridge in Death Valley (want to say it's related to Golden Canyon??)
26. A large sinkhole
27. A glacial outwash plain
28. A sea stack
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide - Hiked up above the treeline in June 2009 and saw Uncompahgre Peak about ten miles off. There are some incredible views in the Divide region of the San Juans and Colorado. Also drove across it numerous times on the way to and from field camp.
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals We have more than a few in my building, given IL's state mineral is fluorite!
33. Petrified trees Not in-situ - pulled some out of some rock layers out West and we have part of a tree trunk in NHB
34. Lava tubes Snow Canyon, UT and a small one preserved in the Precambrian(!) basalts of Mamainse Point
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. Little Grand Canyon of the San Rafael Swell doesn't count, does it?
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible - Been to Upheaval Dome, which I think was recently discovered to harbor shocked quartz . . .
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe. Been once, going back in May and VERY excited for it!
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing - WANT TO!!!
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below. - Close(ish) - been to "Dante's View" at about 5600 feet. Gorgeous.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism.
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn". Have seen the "Matterhorn" in the San Juans!
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley - Still sad we couldn't talk our petrologist emeritus extraordinaire to let us go!
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah - Better yet in early March, when it was cold, windy, a bit snowy, and outright miserable, which meant we got the most INCREDIBLE shots because no one else was crazy enough to be there when we were!
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
66. Bryce Canyon - Seen it from afar. It was still too cold/snowy at its elevation to make a visit there worthwhile.
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone - While a storm was moving into Yellowstone. Pulled off some gorgeous shots that afternoon as well as a nearly flawless pan of the Spring!
68. Monument Valley
69. The San Andreas fault
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event - Mapped a crapton of landslides in the Wasatch-Uintas during field camp!
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park - Aeolian deposits and they are STUNNING!
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0. - Technically yes; woke up the morning of the Illinois earthquake in 2008, but don't remember which time I woke up specifically to some strange stimulus. I was in East Lansing, MI at the time.
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ - Nope, just the teaching sample from GEOL 107
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil) - Got a bitty-bite on a field trip I drove for last semester, but left it in the university SUV. : ( Good thing I still have a map to that locale!
85. Find gold, however small the flake - I don't think the gold-, silver-, and pyrite-bearing vein material we were allowed to poke around in during a field camp project counts . . .
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall - If I were to experience this, it's probably mean I was too close to the eruption!
88. Experience a sandstorm - Seen a few dust devils outside of Vegas. : D
89. See a tsunami - Totally counting watching the tsunami-cams from CBS Hilo yesterday!
90. Witness a total solar eclipse - Almost. We had a near-total eclipse during school when I was in second grade. I got to watch the whole thing because my mom is awesome and brought in material to allow my class to watch it safely.
91. Witness a tornado firsthand. Unfortunately no, but it's one of my life's goals. I've seen a couple of funnel/wall clouds and an actual DOUBLE ANVIL cloud east of the Front Range in Colorado.
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower - This sounds awesome!
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope. Have seen Saturn, plus Jupiter and the four Galilean moons. Awesomeness.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights. Thought it was a cloud refracting a remnant of sunlight till my dad recognized it for what it was.
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century Hyakutake in 1996 and Hale-Bopp in 1997.
96. See a lunar eclipse - Seen several; one during Sparty Watch
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope - Finally saw Andromeda with naked eye in Big Bend National Park almost exactly a year ago!!
98. Experience a hurricane
99. See noctilucent clouds - Think I have a couple of times; once during a night drive to the U.P. which couldn't be explained by anything else.
100. See the green flash - Been watching Lake Superior sunsets most of my life, watching for the Green Flash. Finally saw one in Curaçao and had a massive geekgasm in front of EVERYONE. If I remember correctly, the trip videographer caught the entire sunset on camera and hopefully didn't have the microphone on!
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Been A While : P
I suppose I should resurrect this thing!
What I've been doing since the last update:
-Research
-Finishing up classes and attempting to keep my head above the proverbial waterline
-Research
-A couple of small, random band functions
-Research
-Final exams
-Research
-Moving out
-Research
-Graduating
-Research
-More moving out
-MORE research
-Commuting between GB and EL to tie up the big loose ends in my research, create my AGU poster, a vector map of my study area, and find what is apparently the ONE garnet in all of my thin section samples.
-Sleeping
-AGU
-Photomicrographs and petrography and discussion of metasomatism, oh my. Woo.
-Caffeine detox
-Pathetic attempts at packing
And tomorrow: MOVING to Champaign! This should be interesting.
Here's what a photomicrograph looks like, for the curious:
The scale bar is 100 micrometers long, and this is a shot of zircons embedded in alkali feldspar, quartz, and suspected "amphibole" (we're not sure yet; might specifically be actinolite) crystals. The zircons are the small, brightly-colored, semi-rectangular crystals. The "amphiboles" are the green/brown, furry-looking crystals; the alkali feldspars are the black-and-white crystals with the jagged lineations; and the quartz is the amorphous white stuff. There's a strange reaction rim around the zircons embedded in the amphibole that we need to look at a bit more, so don't ask me about that.
Seeing those in the thin sections means that we can extract zircons from the kilogram of aplite I have crushed up and sitting in a bag, once we process the sample a bit more. With the extracted zircons, we can mount them on a disc and zap 'em with a laser, creating a small cloud of melted zircon, containing such elements as Zr, U, Th, Pb, and Si, among other things. The relative proportions of the radioactive/radiogenic elements will allow us to extract an approximate age from the zircons that is hopefully representative of the age of crystallization of the rock.
Cool stuff. This is what I'm doing with my summer vacation - exactly what I was doing during the year, without the whole going to class business.
What I've been doing since the last update:
-Research
-Finishing up classes and attempting to keep my head above the proverbial waterline
-Research
-A couple of small, random band functions
-Research
-Final exams
-Research
-Moving out
-Research
-Graduating
-Research
-More moving out
-MORE research
-Commuting between GB and EL to tie up the big loose ends in my research, create my AGU poster, a vector map of my study area, and find what is apparently the ONE garnet in all of my thin section samples.
-Sleeping
-AGU
-Photomicrographs and petrography and discussion of metasomatism, oh my. Woo.
-Caffeine detox
-Pathetic attempts at packing
And tomorrow: MOVING to Champaign! This should be interesting.
Here's what a photomicrograph looks like, for the curious:
The scale bar is 100 micrometers long, and this is a shot of zircons embedded in alkali feldspar, quartz, and suspected "amphibole" (we're not sure yet; might specifically be actinolite) crystals. The zircons are the small, brightly-colored, semi-rectangular crystals. The "amphiboles" are the green/brown, furry-looking crystals; the alkali feldspars are the black-and-white crystals with the jagged lineations; and the quartz is the amorphous white stuff. There's a strange reaction rim around the zircons embedded in the amphibole that we need to look at a bit more, so don't ask me about that.Seeing those in the thin sections means that we can extract zircons from the kilogram of aplite I have crushed up and sitting in a bag, once we process the sample a bit more. With the extracted zircons, we can mount them on a disc and zap 'em with a laser, creating a small cloud of melted zircon, containing such elements as Zr, U, Th, Pb, and Si, among other things. The relative proportions of the radioactive/radiogenic elements will allow us to extract an approximate age from the zircons that is hopefully representative of the age of crystallization of the rock.
Cool stuff. This is what I'm doing with my summer vacation - exactly what I was doing during the year, without the whole going to class business.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
A Few Random Geologically-Related Things of Note
-The Yellowstone swarm is picking back up? Frequency of quakes have risen in the last couple of days.
-If being a geology (or old-style environmental geosciences) major and religious simultaneously doesn't make you question your beliefs, you're not doing it right. Some friends of mine in this department who have had a religious influence in their lives have had one hell of an ideological struggle between the two at times. And no, you can't compromise with "Creation Geology." That stuff's utter BS. The arguments are compelling for both sides. Some, however, are presented with data acquired using widely accepted techniques by the worldwide scientific community, and others are presented as data, possibly legitimately acquired, possibly not (possibly bad data, which unfortunately also happens now and again in the research community), and wrapped in compelling prose and argument. It's up to the reader to decide. Check out the first link in particular - though proceed with caution. It asks, in some cases, very good questions, but watch out for ones that are based on assumptions taken from the Bible and using it as a preconception in the logic used there.
-On a similar note (and I can't tell if the kid's joking or not), I read through a timeline someone wrote up for today's in-class assignment and he used a Creationist timeline. If I hadn't been reading it on a bus, head would've met desk. Hard.
-If I'm wrong about this whole science thing and the Bible is actually right, I'll be damned. Literally. But I'm okay with being wrong now and again. It's much more interesting.
-I must spend more time bonding with the rock saws - er, cutting cracks out of my aplite samples. Some of them are bad enough that I fear they'll take me the rest of my natural life, but I don't trust anyone else to help me. They're not easy to see and it's easier to blame myself for any mistakes than others. It's immensely satisfying when you hit a fracture just right and it un-cements itself. One can then proceed to taking the fracture surface off without much additional effort.
-I sleep better outside. In a tent, anyway. And yes, that includes in sub-freezing temperatures. Best sleep in recent memory was when the ragtag bunch of field campers I spent a glorious half-summer with headed south to the San Rafael Swell and camped/did geology for a couple of nights. At our second campsite, which looked out over the Little Grand Canyon, the night temperatures were so mild that many of us didn't even bother to put up tents, choosing instead to lay out sleeping bags directly on Nature. I woke up once in the ferociously-early morning hours because the Moon was rising bright.
I woke up to a grand sight:
Then I found my glasses:
(Yes, I really slept that far away from the edge of the canyon. Note I placed my bag carefully perpendicular to the edge in case I was restless at any time during the night, which wasn't the case. These pictures don't do justice. Too bad they don't make filters for point-and-shoots. Watch out PhotoShop!)
-One thing I've noticed of late. The class I'm co-TAing should, in theory, be an unbiased cross section of the University demographic. Everyone has to take an ISP (Integrated Studies in Physical Science; the same with ISBiology and ISSocial [Science] x2) class at my university, as it's a public and non-liberal arts institution. Science majors don't have to take the ISP and ISB classes as long as they take at least basic biology- and physical science-related classes as part of their core.
But I digress.
What I've noticed is that the average layman has absolutely no conception of the inertia of a system as large as what's seen on the Earth. For that matter, they have no conception of the inertia of Earth's internal system (and I, a burgeoning geoscientist/petrologist/whatever) only have an inkling of the internal dynamics of Earth -- as much as everyone else in my field. We can't directly observe, so we have to find other reliable methods by which to measure. Not everyone outside of the mode of thought into which I think I shaped myself many years ago takes that at its word. However, we are all creatures of repetition and are as one susceptible to it, so when a misnomer such as "global warming" is screamed in your ear via the popular media a few hundred thousand times, you take it as fact and go with it. This cross section of the university almost as one think that "global warming" means "a uniform increase in temperatures around the world."
What, as scientists, can we do to change these widespread and flatly WRONG notions? Not to bash the media (because they do what they have to do to sell their product, as does everyone else), but once they get a bone, they go with it. Simplify and deliver to the masses with the least amount of energy, so they can absorb it with the least amount of energy.
Empty calories of the mind.
What do we do to get folks to take five minutes of their time, log onto teh Wiki (should I be pooh-pooing? No. Wikipedia's surprisingly accurate, and if you want to be thorough, follow the citations, people. That's how I find some of my research papers when I get desperate!) and look up some of these terms we hear so much in the modern media.
Ask questions. Train yourself to ignore social, cultural preconceptions (okay, the latter is not as easy as it sounds) when addressing such popular topics and look past the term. Look at where it came from, what it evolved into.
There's always so much more we never knew behind these topics.
-Is this why I can't sleep?
-If being a geology (or old-style environmental geosciences) major and religious simultaneously doesn't make you question your beliefs, you're not doing it right. Some friends of mine in this department who have had a religious influence in their lives have had one hell of an ideological struggle between the two at times. And no, you can't compromise with "Creation Geology." That stuff's utter BS. The arguments are compelling for both sides. Some, however, are presented with data acquired using widely accepted techniques by the worldwide scientific community, and others are presented as data, possibly legitimately acquired, possibly not (possibly bad data, which unfortunately also happens now and again in the research community), and wrapped in compelling prose and argument. It's up to the reader to decide. Check out the first link in particular - though proceed with caution. It asks, in some cases, very good questions, but watch out for ones that are based on assumptions taken from the Bible and using it as a preconception in the logic used there.
-On a similar note (and I can't tell if the kid's joking or not), I read through a timeline someone wrote up for today's in-class assignment and he used a Creationist timeline. If I hadn't been reading it on a bus, head would've met desk. Hard.
-If I'm wrong about this whole science thing and the Bible is actually right, I'll be damned. Literally. But I'm okay with being wrong now and again. It's much more interesting.
-I must spend more time bonding with the rock saws - er, cutting cracks out of my aplite samples. Some of them are bad enough that I fear they'll take me the rest of my natural life, but I don't trust anyone else to help me. They're not easy to see and it's easier to blame myself for any mistakes than others. It's immensely satisfying when you hit a fracture just right and it un-cements itself. One can then proceed to taking the fracture surface off without much additional effort.
-I sleep better outside. In a tent, anyway. And yes, that includes in sub-freezing temperatures. Best sleep in recent memory was when the ragtag bunch of field campers I spent a glorious half-summer with headed south to the San Rafael Swell and camped/did geology for a couple of nights. At our second campsite, which looked out over the Little Grand Canyon, the night temperatures were so mild that many of us didn't even bother to put up tents, choosing instead to lay out sleeping bags directly on Nature. I woke up once in the ferociously-early morning hours because the Moon was rising bright.
I woke up to a grand sight:
Then I found my glasses:
(Yes, I really slept that far away from the edge of the canyon. Note I placed my bag carefully perpendicular to the edge in case I was restless at any time during the night, which wasn't the case. These pictures don't do justice. Too bad they don't make filters for point-and-shoots. Watch out PhotoShop!)-One thing I've noticed of late. The class I'm co-TAing should, in theory, be an unbiased cross section of the University demographic. Everyone has to take an ISP (Integrated Studies in Physical Science; the same with ISBiology and ISSocial [Science] x2) class at my university, as it's a public and non-liberal arts institution. Science majors don't have to take the ISP and ISB classes as long as they take at least basic biology- and physical science-related classes as part of their core.
But I digress.
What I've noticed is that the average layman has absolutely no conception of the inertia of a system as large as what's seen on the Earth. For that matter, they have no conception of the inertia of Earth's internal system (and I, a burgeoning geoscientist/petrologist/whatever) only have an inkling of the internal dynamics of Earth -- as much as everyone else in my field. We can't directly observe, so we have to find other reliable methods by which to measure. Not everyone outside of the mode of thought into which I think I shaped myself many years ago takes that at its word. However, we are all creatures of repetition and are as one susceptible to it, so when a misnomer such as "global warming" is screamed in your ear via the popular media a few hundred thousand times, you take it as fact and go with it. This cross section of the university almost as one think that "global warming" means "a uniform increase in temperatures around the world."
What, as scientists, can we do to change these widespread and flatly WRONG notions? Not to bash the media (because they do what they have to do to sell their product, as does everyone else), but once they get a bone, they go with it. Simplify and deliver to the masses with the least amount of energy, so they can absorb it with the least amount of energy.
Empty calories of the mind.
What do we do to get folks to take five minutes of their time, log onto teh Wiki (should I be pooh-pooing? No. Wikipedia's surprisingly accurate, and if you want to be thorough, follow the citations, people. That's how I find some of my research papers when I get desperate!) and look up some of these terms we hear so much in the modern media.
Ask questions. Train yourself to ignore social, cultural preconceptions (okay, the latter is not as easy as it sounds) when addressing such popular topics and look past the term. Look at where it came from, what it evolved into.
There's always so much more we never knew behind these topics.
-Is this why I can't sleep?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Zzzz
Time for a short update, I guess.
My petrology class and the undergrad group that accompanied us returned last night around 9 pm. Well, technically that was when the last of us got in -- the other two cars chose to go on ahead of us once we crossed back into the U.S.
It was a good time! Lots of great old basalts in surprisingly good condition, especially when the whole vesicular (high surface area), billion-plus year old petrified lava thing comes into play. We took many pounds of samples and enjoyed some REALLY nice weather along the lake shore.
Pictures to come after I've had some more rest.
Also: I have arsenides in my room. Bwahahaha. Don't worry, I know how to handle them safely, and I won't let anyone else touch them. Or lick them.
My petrology class and the undergrad group that accompanied us returned last night around 9 pm. Well, technically that was when the last of us got in -- the other two cars chose to go on ahead of us once we crossed back into the U.S.
It was a good time! Lots of great old basalts in surprisingly good condition, especially when the whole vesicular (high surface area), billion-plus year old petrified lava thing comes into play. We took many pounds of samples and enjoyed some REALLY nice weather along the lake shore.
Pictures to come after I've had some more rest.
Also: I have arsenides in my room. Bwahahaha. Don't worry, I know how to handle them safely, and I won't let anyone else touch them. Or lick them.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Busy Weekend!
Friday:
-Rode past Dem Field ony my way to work and saw they had the lines painted and Grounds was mowing the field. Marching season has begun!
-Spent the day (while at work) trading the occasional e-mail back and forth with my research professor regarding my intentions to head up this weekend to gather some field samples.
-Left work early and headed to my research prof's office to discuss field work in person.
-Nearly had to can researching what appeared to be a very promising site. Prof makes a call and finds that the technique used in the last published work at the site is considered outmoded now, so research is ON!
-Headed home for the night.
Saturday:
-Breakfast @ Sophia's Kitchen with Webmomster. Omelets and delicious chocolate chip pancakes. Walked to and from.
-Back to the house to load the Guyz into the car and take off for the Great White North. Got the dogs out of Webmomster's hair so she could get some work done around the house.
-Reach the cabin, say hi to the Commander, fall asleep on futon? Check.
-Walked the beach, said hi to the amethyst rock and the mystery boulder, and got rained on. Cool but not cold. Gathered a half-cup of blueberries just before twilight.
-Wrestled with the futon. The futon won.
Sunday:
-Zzzzzzz.
-Eat.
-Say hi to Jan, load up car, listen to conversation, realize what time it is, take off for home.
-Wrestle with horrible traffic from Bay City to Grand Blanc.
-Ate a delicious dinner and checked out Frumious's new casing, being a hard drive independent from the FrankenBook. Copied music and photos (4.51 GB . . . wow) and documents (oh my) to the BlackBook.
-Decide to stay the night since Nook's out with friends till ?? and don't want to disrupt.
-Stay up too late to write this? Check.
-Rode past Dem Field ony my way to work and saw they had the lines painted and Grounds was mowing the field. Marching season has begun!
-Spent the day (while at work) trading the occasional e-mail back and forth with my research professor regarding my intentions to head up this weekend to gather some field samples.
-Left work early and headed to my research prof's office to discuss field work in person.
-Nearly had to can researching what appeared to be a very promising site. Prof makes a call and finds that the technique used in the last published work at the site is considered outmoded now, so research is ON!
-Headed home for the night.
Saturday:
-Breakfast @ Sophia's Kitchen with Webmomster. Omelets and delicious chocolate chip pancakes. Walked to and from.
-Back to the house to load the Guyz into the car and take off for the Great White North. Got the dogs out of Webmomster's hair so she could get some work done around the house.
-Reach the cabin, say hi to the Commander, fall asleep on futon? Check.
-Walked the beach, said hi to the amethyst rock and the mystery boulder, and got rained on. Cool but not cold. Gathered a half-cup of blueberries just before twilight.
-Wrestled with the futon. The futon won.
Sunday:
-Zzzzzzz.
-Eat.
-Say hi to Jan, load up car, listen to conversation, realize what time it is, take off for home.
-Wrestle with horrible traffic from Bay City to Grand Blanc.
-Ate a delicious dinner and checked out Frumious's new casing, being a hard drive independent from the FrankenBook. Copied music and photos (4.51 GB . . . wow) and documents (oh my) to the BlackBook.
-Decide to stay the night since Nook's out with friends till ?? and don't want to disrupt.
-Stay up too late to write this? Check.
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