Post date: Jul 6, 2013 7:07:54 PM
I am very excited to be working in Kim Blisniuk’s lab this summer. It is in the Mitchell Building’s Sub-basement. We are dating the age of old stream channels, called beheaded streams, created as faults move cut them off from their sources of water. The streams are dated by isolating the quartz inside the rock samples taken from the channels. In the past two weeks, we were in the Rock Lab and crushed rocks, some the size of large melons, into sands less than 250 microns across. In the lab, the samples are then soaked in multiple acids to remove organics. Each sample goes through 5 rounds of baths. Afterwards they sit on hot dog-style rollers to dry. This is only the first part of the process we should begin the next step this coming week.
So far, I have really enjoyed my experience working in the lab. Though extremely different from the experience found in textbooks and classrooms, I find that the lab possesses its own unique perspective that is very intriguing.
This coming week, I look forward to Friday when we will be driving out to prospective sites for collecting samples, as well as continuing work on samples.