Posts useful if you are new and just getting yourself set up in the lab.
My students and I are preparing to go up to Bellingham on Thursday to do some work in the paleomagnetic lab up there, so we spent today’s lab meeting getting everyone acquainted with the data they are going to collect. I started explaining something in the lab meeting that I thought could use a demonstration. […]
I wrote an assignment for my students yesterday. I ask them to write a blog post (watch for those soon), and give them some guidelines for doing so. I thought it was worth putting up here both for public comment and because I think it’s a nice statement about what I’m trying to do here. […]
In my drive to get everything in the lab automated, I’ve set up a checkout system for the lab books. To check books in or out, use this form, or scan with your phone. Note that on the mobile app, you will have to type in your UW NETID, whereas on the browser form you […]
I’m finally getting back to the blog after about a week of frantic magnetometry (we discovered a bug in our magnetometer software, because of which we had to measure lots of stuff all over again!) and report-writing. Here is another in my reverse-color series on magnetic reversals.
Earth has a magnetic field, which is what keeps your compass lined up with the North Pole [1]. The Earth’s outer core generates that magnetic field. You may have heard before that Earth’s magnetic field has, in the past, switched its North and South Poles. This is true, and kind of amazing and mysterious, but useful […]
As I’ve been writing these blog posts, I’ve been trying to include footnotes that point you deeper into the scientific literature about paleomagnetism, rock magnetism, and the geology of the Bengal Fan. But if you’re a student planning on working with me this coming quarter, you might want a little more background than what I’ve been putting […]
I spend about 12 hours in the lab most of the days I’m at sea [1]. So do most of the other scientists on board. Sometimes we get a little silly talking about our lab equipment after (or during) our shifts. Right now the lab is kind of quiet, waiting for cores to come up from our […]
We are currently drilling through a big pile of mud and sand on the seafloor (the biggest such pile of mud and sand in the world), and I’m spending most of my day sitting next to the “silver bullet” in this photo:If you can’t see the sign in the photo, this is the superconducting rock […]
The JOIDES Resolution is a ship made to recover hundreds of meters of rock or mud cores from miles below the ocean. This amazing feat is accomplished by a huge crew and one big drill. To understand what we’re trying to do out here, it helps to know how the drilling works.The tower-like structure on the […]