Me: It looks like they're sitting on an ant hill.
Grad Student: Yes, it's an ant hill. That's sort of the point.
Me: I hope it's a dead ant hill.
2nd Grad Student: Yeah, me too.
Grad Student: We're looking for garnets.
Apparently ants will bring up sapphires and rubies, even diamonds, if that the sort of thing under the ground where they live. Here it is garnets.
The best things about geology (or Earth and Planetary Science as we call it at UNM) are the field trips and that assignments involve a lot of coloring. Coloring and field trips... it's like being a kid all over again.
Clearly, I need a brown leather hat.
This is also a fun thing about geology:
The basement contains all of the really cool gear. The high pressure lab, the electron microscopes... and this.
It's a plasma generator, I think... shoots plasma at stuff and then analyzes what gets burned away. What exactly the plasma is is the important part. I just don't *remember* that part.
I do remember, though, that the sample preparation involves covering the surface of the material with gold to conduct away released electrons.
How neat is that?
The electron microscopes are sort of boring looking, all nicely contained inside cases but this definitely wins on looks.
11 comments:
What exactly the plasma is is the important part. I just don't *remember* that part.
Let Elton John help you...
...Candles in a magnetic wind: Plasma made simple
Ah, cool. (or not cool...) That was an excellent description.
Thing is, we got shown around the labs last fall when I took the picture because I thought my kids would like it. I just got the silly pictures off my phone and the explanations were a long time ago.
In any case, by "what the plasma is" I meant what particular element... I think that they can produce plasma from different gasses and my bad memory wants to insist on something about a particular oxygen isotope but I might be making that up on account of it's *always* about percentages of particular oxygen isotopes. :)
Very cool. Both the garner hunting and the plasma generator.
Remember the early 70s when one computer took the entire bottom two basement floors of the Electrical Engineering building?
The best part of geology is the beer.
I do not want to see an ant capable of hauling up something the size of the Hope diamond.
I did not know that?
Diamonds and other gems will rise to the surface on their own under the right conditions. Diamonds, being carbon, are lighter than dirt which is mostly silicon and oxygen. Whenever there are heavy and long rains at Arkansas's Crater of Diamonds park, you always read about somebody finding a rough diamond which has risen to the top in the dirt soup.
@Synova: Your comment about plasma, oxygen and isotopes piqued my interest. The making of plasma is an electronic effect -- separating electron from a charged nucleus. Isotopes only differ by numbers of neutrons which shouldn't affect how tightly or loosely an electron is held in atoms. That being said, when oxygen containing molecules are ruptured and free to recombine, isotopes will fractionate and enrich in reformed molecules. This a quantum mechanical effect. Isotope fractionation is a huge field in geology. I corresponded with the guy who first explained such effects and had the pleasure of meeting him once before he passed away. Interesting guy he, Jacob Bigeleisen. He worked on the Manhattan Project when it was still in Manhattan.
Most likely no geology major has ever admitted that he's in it for the rubies and diamonds but WE KNOW.
Chickie chickie chickie!
Is it the mass of the elements that matter or the density of their compounds?
Chickie chickie chickie!
"The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
~ T.H. Huxley"
_______________
Density of diamond ~ 3.5 g/cm3
Average density of sand ~ 1.5
D'oh!
Post a Comment