feeling good that I was able to make a contribution

Over the summer and in these posts, I’ve talked about how I have

helped processed samples from all along the San Andreas Fault. First, here is a quick recap of what I have done this summer. Our samples are used to find slip rates of different sections of the San Andreas. By aligning geologic features and rock types along opposite sides of the fault, we can learn the distance the plates have moved. In the lab, we prep the samples for mass spectrometry at the Lawrence Livermore Lab in Berkeley.

At Lawrence Livermore, the mass spectrometer is able to identify the ratio of cosmogenic Beryllium isotopes in the samples. Based on how long a sample has been exposed to sunlight, the ratio of isotopes changes, which allows us to calculate the time since a sample was initially exposed to the sun (the time since seismic activity separated the geologic features). Originally, I began processing samples from the Pushawalla, Canyon site in Southern California. These samples began as large rocks taken directly from the field. As I wrote before, we have crushed, leached, and dissolved these rocks into fractions of their original mass. Since my last post, we have continued the processing. In the last two weeks I setup, the columns (On the right), which are able to pull out a variety of elements from the dissolved quartz. Using the columns, we are able to pull out ions of Iron and Aluminum from the samples, until the Beryllium is isolated. Samples are run through multiple rounds of columns and continue chemical processing afterwards.

In this internship, I realized how much time and work are truly needed to produce data. I really did enjoy my time working in the lab because through the program I was able to know and understand the goal of the work in the lab. In addition, I learned a lot about working in a lab as well as in the field. Although the program is now over, I leave the lab feeling good that I was able to make a contribution to not only research but research that I believe in and research that is relevant to the area where I live.