my passion for science

Post date: Jul 26, 2013 6:21:31 PM

Another four weeks of the Stanford Earth Sciences internship has gone by, with many learning opportunities and fun events. Throughout this internship, I have met many people, all of whom are friendly and share my passion for science.

Our AGU project, which will be presented in December to a large group of scientists, involves finding the relationship between ostracod size and the amount of biomass in oil wells. Our hypothesis is that ostracods of longer length imply more biomass, and thus more oil. We are almost finished with this project; we have yet to write up our poster. The code, data collection, and abstract for the project are also finished. The data collection was tedious; we had to individually record the time periods, the latitude, and the longitude of each ostracod recorded. In the end, however, our hard work paid off.

Our most recent field trip was to UC Berkeley. We explored the Valley Earth Sciences Building. We saw a large remodeled Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton and received a tour of Berkeley’s gigantic collection of fossils. After this tour, we went to the California Memorial Stadium, lying directly above the Hayward Fault. The fault split the stadium in two, and we even saw the line where the split was. We learned that the Hayward Fault is a strike-slip fault, meaning the plates move parallel to the fault. We also learned that the stadium was split in two to accommodate the movement of the fault. Finally, we saw Strawberry Creek, a dried-up river which had its course shifted by the movement of the fault. Our trip was very interesting and a great learning experience.

The Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

A mastodon fossil.