Lab day number 4!

Today was a long day for Team Geomorph.  We started out by doing some GIS/photoshop/abstract-writing, then Kira and I moved on to weighing out our samples and adding hydrochloric acid to them.

Geologists (Kira, above, and Haley, top) hard at work

We took advantage of a delicious free lunch in the lobby after we put the samples in a sonic bath (to keep them mixed while the acid leaches off the coatings of the grains), then went back to work on the computers.  At one point, we had to turn off the heat in the sonic bath since the bottles were starting to deform and smell weird, but after that we were back to work drying out the fine-grained samples!  We centrifuged them to get out some of the water, then scoop out the mushy muddy clay and put it in dishes to go in the oven to finish drying out.

Here's a video of us pouring samples into centrifuge tubes! 

Oh me oh my… “hard rock” people were all over the place today. We received our last batch of

rock buckets/samples yesterday (and just in time). Those of us that needed to finish powdering

rock samples were able to do so. Jessie and Sarah were able to weigh out the powders to prep

them for their acid baths. I also got the rest of my thin sections (Thank you Bill!!!!!) and get to

start doing my point counts tomorrow (1000 points on 11 slides… huzzah!).

Half of my thin sections (I’m really excited about the one with the giant enclave).

Now that all the rock cutting and powdering machine work is finished we get to spend our time

glued to petrographic microscopes and thumbing through different scientific papers that relate to

our projects (happy happy joy joy).

Twinned plagioclase crystals 👿 ...check out that cleavage👿

Everyone has the option to take the day off tomorrow but a few of us are planning on going to

the lab and taking advantage of having fewer people to try and work around in our small

basement lab. There is also a change that the SEM machine will be repaired tomorrow (fingers

crossed)!

~Haley and Katie