Finally, pictures!

I finally got off my butt and uploaded the photos from my two field trips. I was intending to get a flickr account, but didn't feel like resurrecting my old Yahoo e-mail address. So let's try Picasa and see how it works!

Field trip 1
Field trip 2

These are all the photos I took of the field trips. I've put captions on most of them, so hopefully they'll be clear. And all of this stuff is less than a day's drive from Denver!I do have all the photos from the Moab field trips I did a year ago, so I'll try to get those together soon.

An astronomy quiz for you!

Beautiful Universe Astronomy Quiz.

I got 18/20. I blame those two missed points on the fact that I'm a geologist.

Words fail me.

Council bans parents from play areas

Thank you, England, for reminding me that the United States is not necessarily the world leader in the Out Of Their F****** Minds arms race. I'm waiting for a town in the US to pick this one up; we can't let the Brits stay ahead of us long when it comes to ridiculous fear mongering.

I think what hurts my brain the most about this is the logic that parents can apparently not be trusted to be in a park with their children, but can in fact be trusted to, you know, take those kids home.

She said: "Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults."

In today's climate? And what climate would that be... total paranoia?

Know your internet laws.

There will be a quiz.

Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe

Poe's Law is a beloved old friend of mine, as is Godwin's Law. Double points if you can mix the two. Funny enough, when I run in to Poe's Law material, I automatically assume that anything that ridiculous must be parody until proven otherwise. This may not be the best position to take, since it means I tend to think people are more sane and have better senses of humor than is actually true. And this has led to some truly jaw-dropping moments of "BZUH?"

Also, I'd been unaware of Danth's Law until now, but the example used to illustrate it (Lansky pwning Schlafly) still never fails to make me chortle with glee.

Gotten punched in the arm lately?

I got my seasonal flu jab (as the fiance would say it) yesterday afternoon, and I do indeed feel like I got punched in the arm, even after taking the precaution of getting the shot in my right arm. (Since I'm right handed, I was hoping that would help me work out that "punched in the arm" feeling sooner.) Even if it's a little annoying, I take the pain as a point of pride. Some of it is because after years of practicing kung fu, you start seeing bruises as a badge of just how hardcore you are. But also, I see it as a badge of honor that says "Hey, I want to make the people who live in my community just a little safer."

As usual this time of year, I've heard a lot of people say that they don't want to get a flu shot, because they never get the flu anyway and the flu isn't that bad. Well, if you're a twenty-something with a suitably horse-like immune system, you could definitely argue the point. Now, first off I have to say anyone who claims the flu isn't all that bad has:
a) Never had the actual flu.
b) Never known anyone that's had the actual flu.
c) Is possibly doing psychoactive drugs.

Some sniffles and a day or two of a low fever isn't the flu. Neither is an annoying cough that takes a couple weeks to go away but leaves you otherwise feeling dandy. No, the flu is flat-on-you-back can't-move-a-muscle fever for a week straight with a severe cough and a lot of other unpleasant baggage. I've managed to never have the flu thus far, and boy do I feel lucky. My best friend, who teaches first grade, caught H1N1 from one of her little germ factories and it seems to have been one of the most miserable experiences of her life.

But getting the flu shot isn't about you to begin with. It's about your granny, your five-year-old niece, and your neighbor who is immune compromised because she's getting treated for breast cancer. It's about trying to muster up enough immunity in the "herd" surrounding these people that they won't catch the flu. If you get the flu, you get a week of misery and another week of not-quite misery where you spend a lot of time laying in bed, being bored and watching daytime television. If these vulnerable people get the flu, it's worse, it's longer, and it could very well kill them.

So I got my flu shot for my dad, who is diabetic and over fifty. I also got it for my women's studies teacher, who is pregnant. And for the grandmothers and cancer survivors and little kids that I don't know, but who also don't deserve to get sick because I was intimidated by a little poke in the arm.

Stop being selfish, stop making excuses, and just go get your darn flu shot already.


A couple of links, because as we all know the world needs more Mark Crislip:
Flu Vaccine Efficacy
More Flu Woo For You, Boo Boo
Both of the above entries have been made in to podcasts as well.

And from Joe, also at Science Based Medicine, responding to the inane "18 reasons why you should not vaccinate your children against the flu this season.": 9 Reasons to Completely Ignore Joseph Mercola

Two interesting science bits for today.

Presidential election outcome changed voters' testosterone - people are getting an immature giggle out of this one, since it just begs for jokes about Obama unmanning the opposition. I think it's more an interesting look at the effects of perceived defeat, rather than a chance to meditate on how Obama is a psychologically castrating force for conservatives.

Discovery of the Largest Orbweaving Spider Species: The Evolution of Gigantism in Nephila - Very cool stuff about spider evolution. io9 has a really neat gallery of pictures of the species.

A Home-Grown Hoax

I figure most people are already familiar with the entire "Balloon Boy" incident that happened in Colorado six days ago. But just in case, a quick recap:

A Colorado family, apparently famous for having been on the reality TV show "Wife Swap" claimed that their six-year-old son, Falcon Heene, had somehow climbed in to an experimental weather balloon that they had tethered in the backyard, and the balloon subsequently lifted off. For the next several hours, authorities in Colorado went bonkers trying to figure out how to get the presumably terrified six-year-old out of the balloon without causing him to plummet to his death. During the time the balloon was aloft, Denver International Airport had to be temporarily shut down because the balloon wandered in to its air space. Eventually, the balloon came to the ground due to partial deflation, and it was discovered the boy was not inside; some claimed that they'd seen "part of the balloon" fall off and it was feared the boy had fallen to his death. Eventually the boy was discovered safe at home, and his father claimed that he'd been hiding in the attic over the garage the whole time.

On its face, the story seemed bizarre, but not completely unbelievable. I admit that when I first heard it, I had three major questions, however.
1) How did a six-year-old kid manage to quietly hide in the attic for that long a period without being detected by the police, or by his parents who would presumably know that he could be up there?
2) Six-year-old kids aren't exactly light; was that balloon actually big enough to carry him up?
3) Am I only feeling this suspicious because people keep bringing up that Heene and his family were on a reality TV show and that makes him sound kind of skeevey?

Apparently, those were the two questions to ask. It was a hoax, and the police are planning to press charges. Apparently the police had one of the same doubts I did, because they asked if the balloon was big enough; after what Heene initially told them, they thought it might be. It turns out he lied about that as well.

I'm glad the police responded like they did. It wasn't really possible to know at the time that it was a hoax; with the safety of the child possibly at risk, I think they acted they way they needed to. The story may have sounded far-fetched, but without solid evidence that it was a hoax at the time, I think they had to assume that they were being told the truth. It's rare, but this (general) sort of thing has happened before. I'm also glad that it was identified as a hoax as quickly as it was. But there are other issues this whole incident brings up.

It certainly has bought Heene and his family fame, though not necessarily the kind he was looking for. Apparently, this hoax was his attempt to land another reality TV gig, this one where he's a "Psyence Detective." Yes, I'm being serious. One thing that just bothered me about the coverage (other than the constant mentions of "Wife Swap") was this sort of thing:

"When the Heene family aren't chasing storms, they devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm," the show's Web site said.

The coverage mentioned Heene's "scientific" interests a lot. Frankly, if he's advertising "experiments" aimed at finding extra terrestrials - particularly ones that he's convinced exist because he hit his head on the floor of a fast food restaurant and lost consciousness - this doesn't make him any sort of scientist or even science enthusiast, in my opinion. It makes him a crank. Considering that Heene is a believer in the 2012 Doomsday nonsense, I really don't feel the slightest twinge about calling him a crank.

This brings up so many issues about what's being put on TV, and the utterly stupid, reckless things that people will do in order to participate in reality TV. I don't think I need to write a screed about that sort of TV programming. What I'm hoping is the fact that Heene got caught, and caught quickly, and is facing criminal charges will make other people think twice before they try to pull a similar hoax.

I will say that I'm very, very glad that it looks like Heene's TV show dreams have been sunk. Reality TV already has plenty of cranks that misinform their viewers without him and his "psyence" detecting.

Cloudy with a chance of rhyolite.

A Planet Where It "Rains" Rocks

Perhaps because they were cooked off, COROT-7b's atmosphere has none of the volatile elements or compounds that make up Earth's atmosphere, such as water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. "The only atmosphere this object has is produced from vapor arising from hot molten silicates in a lava lake or lava ocean," Fegley says.

It cannot possibly get awesomer (I was going to say "cooler" but that seems somehow inappropriate) than this. Glee!

Fear and Panic, Panic and Fear

Scientists try to calm '2012' hysteria

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

It all boils down to people being afraid of something that they needn't be afraid of, and other people getting fat off of it. The 2012 panic isn't as bad as the anti-vaccination movement; it's not going to kill adults and children like anti-vaxers already have. But I'd say it's cut from the same cloth.

I think scientists are always going to be in the unfortunate position of trying to pick up the pieces after charlatans and the simply misinformed have done their Godzilla-like lumbering around. Scientists, after all, are hobbled by the inability to Just Make Shit Up.

Tying the knot

Melissa Harris-Lacewell reflects on marriage.

I really respect MHL, and this article made me respect her even more. I was strongly on the side of marriage equality before I was ever in a committed relationship. I canvassed for Referendum i in Colorado, and was incredibly upset when it failed and the gay marriage ban amendment passed.

This issue's taken on a new light for me since I've gotten engaged, though. For the most part, I'm happy, and I feel like one of the commenters on the article as well - after more than four years of cohabitation, I honestly feel like we're married already. A party and a fancy cake are more just a celebration of that commitment, at least in my opinion. But since I've been engaged, there are two aspects that are still bothering me about the process.

The first is the last name change issue. That's a discussion for another time.

But the other is the issue of marriage equality. My fiance and I have the right to make of this marriage what we will, and we've got the legal support for it because we're heterosexual. I have some very dear, close friends who are not in the same boat as us, and have been in a committed relationship far longer without the ability to get the same legal support. It bothers me that I get a privilege they don't, and all because I like sleeping with boys instead of girls. A lot of the arguments "defending" marriage have made me even more uncomfortable about it, because of all the religious and sexist baggage that comes with the institution. (And let me tell you, as an atheist, I am utterly charmed by people who hammer marriage as a religious institution - guess I shouldn't be getting married at all.)

This was why MHL's point at the end really hit me. People seem to want marriage to not change. Frankly, I hope it does. It's already different from how it was in the 50s. It's still not common, but most people don't have to do a double take any more if a woman hyphenates her last name or decides not to change it at all. While many people bemoan the divorce rate, I take it as a good sign that people have the ability to end relationships that go bad. So I hope that as we fight for marriage equality, it will change the institution as it is. I want to see marriage become a place where no one looks sideways at guys that want to be stay at home dads, or (perish the thought) men who decide to take their wife's last name rather than the other way around. I want people to finally get the difference between civil marriage and church marriage and stop asking horribly insulting questions like "Why do atheists get married?" (Answers: love, family, and health insurance. Oh, and you're an asshole.)

Sometimes, I feel like I should refuse to participate in this institution as long as my friends are denied it. Because it does feel horrible being able to get married and knowing that I have friends who can't because the country's apparently still run by a bunch of neanderthals that can't understand reasons more complicated than "making babies." But in a way, reading MHL's article has made me feel a little differently. No, my one little wedding isn't going to change marriage the way so many national changes have. But maybe I can be on more little snowflake to help get the avalanche rumbling.

Cell phone + driving = BAD

Dr. Novella writes about a study by Ira Hyman et al.

This was the most interesting bit of what Dr. Novella had to say:

What this all might mean is that there is something about talking on a cell phone that is particularly demanding of our attention – more so than listening to music or talking with someone who is physically present. These results also support the hypothesis that talking with a passenger is not as dangerous because the extra pair of eyes increases the chance that someone will notice a sudden obstacle or unexpected traffic pattern.

Anecdotally, I would certainly agree. I notice things just fine walking down the street when I'm listening to my iPod or walking to the bus station with Mike. If I'm having to return a phone call while I'm walking, I wouldn't even notice a full marching band unless they were making enough noise to keep me from hearing the person on the other end of the phone. I once dropped my USB drive and walked off, and a really nice guy had to chase me half a block to give it back to me because I was talking on my phone and didn't notice someone shouting to get my attention.

I've pretty much thought hands-free laws were crap from the beginning. It doesn't help if you've only got one hand on the wheel when it comes to maneuvering, but frankly I'd bet that most people only keep one hand on the wheel unless they're turning anyway. (On a side note, I don't know how people who drive manuals can manage to talk on a cell phone like that anyway, unless they're on the highway and don't have to shift.) It really is the distraction that causes accidents and kills.

In my opinion, even freakier: people who text and drive. Actually, I'll own up. The only car accident I've been in since becoming a driver was my own fault, and caused by me attempting to text and drive. (This was seven or eight years ago when it happened.) I rear ended someone at about five miles an hour on the highway when we were in complete gridlock. At that point, I realized how I literally had not seen it coming, and since then I refuse to even touch my cell phone when I'm in the driver's seat. If someone calls me, I toss it to my passenger and make them check it. (Another reason not to drive with me?)

So we know it's dangerous to be on a cell phone and drive, particularly now whether it's hands free or not. I don't know if there's really anything you could do about it. Sure, you can make laws, but enforcing them is another matter. The biggest problem is that if it were just people deciding they'd rather take the risk than be separated from their precious cell phone for the duration of a drive, fine. But they're on the road with everyone else, including people who probably aren't happy accepting that risk since they're the ones that will get rear-ended by the jackass that won't just hang up and drive.

When I put it like that... well. Driving while on a cell phone: the new driving while intoxicated.

One thing I'd like to see more on scientifically is why talking on a cell phone is more distracting than talking to someone else while walking. I don't know if I buy that it's just the other pair of eyes that makes the difference, since I'd think both people would be distracted by the conversation. If we assume that one conversation is as distracting as the other, then you'd expect that people in pairs would still pay attention better, but I don't know if it would be as much better as it was.

Only 25% of the cell phone users had noticed the clown and many turned around at that point to see what they had missed. In essence, 75% of the cell phone users experienced inattentional blindness to the unicycling clown. In contrast, over half of the people in the other conditions reported seeing the clown (51% of single individuals, 61% of music player users, and 71% of people in pairs).

(Note: the clown thing was testing for inattention blindness by putting a clown on a unicycle very visibly along the path and seeing who noticed him.) The gap here is 25% as compared to 71% - that's a difference of 46%. That's pretty impressive. Maybe cell phones are more distracting because you're missing out on most of the nonverbal side of the conversation?

Also, I wonder why people listening to music did better than people just walking along. That seems odd, but very interesting.

About time those furry little bums get real jobs.

Cat registered as hypnotherapist

So a cat in the UK and another in the US have been accredited by professional hypnotherapist organizations. Some might say that this is a worrying sign of just how laughable and lax these organizations are, which casts serious aspersions on a field already plagued by serious questions regarding its validity.

Me, I say it's about time for those furry little bums start working to pay their share of the mortgage. Watch out, Loki and Tengu. I'll be expecting a rent check to go with my candy and Cthulhu cupcakes on Halloween.

Here Comes Science!

I'll admit it; I actually haven't listened to They might Be Giants in quite a long time, probably not since high school. I originally got turned on to their music because I watched Tiny Toon Adventures (and I am not ashamed!) and there was an episode of it that was just animated music videos to songs off of Flood. I bought Flood and enjoyed it, but after that I got a little too caught up in being a teenager and listening to music that involved a lot of screaming and the sounds of people torturing electric guitars with dental instruments.

I heard that the band's been putting out more kid-oriented music and then my friend Chelsea posted on Twitter that the Here Comes Science was really awesome. Since I'm a slave to anything that is about how cool science is, I bought the album from iTunes and just finished listening to it.

It is a really awesome album. Seriously. It's also definitely kid-safe, kid-friendly, and something kids can enjoy. They may not get all the words, but particularly songs like "The Bloodmobile," "Cells," "Solid, Liquid, Gas," and "Speed and Velocity" put the scientific concepts in to terms I think kids could easily understand. (Man, it would have been nice if someone had explained the difference between speed and velocity to me before I hit the evil brick wall of Physics I in college. Bonus points for in an upbeat song.) And man, are the songs upbeat! I can't listen to "Why Does the Sun Shine?" and "I Am a Paleontologist" without bouncing around.

And of course, as a bonus to the fun tunes, the lyrics are most excellent.

The first song ("Science Is Real") lays it out immediately:

I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like those stories
As much as anybody else
But when I'm seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science

Squee!

And of course, for the budding skeptics out there, we've got "Put It to the Test:"

If somebody says they figured it out
And they're leaving any room for doubt
Come up with a test
Yeah, you need a test

Are you sure that that thing is true?
Or did someone just tell it to you?
Come up with a test

The essence of skepticism, in one cute, bouncy song.

Evolution is mentioned several times in the album, and gets a song all of its own as well, "My Brother the Ape:"

But I'll admit that I look more like a chimp
Than I look like my cousin the shrimp
Or my distant kin the lichens
Or the snowy egret or the moss
And I find it hard to recognize
Some relatives of ours
Like the rotifer, the sycamore
Iguanas and sea stars

I love it! I think kids will love this to bits. And heck, I'm not a kid and I love it to bits too. I need to dig up Flood as well and put it on my iPod again.

A Girl and Her Pet Rock (2)

I went back to the rock lab on Monday to finish up my thin section. Which I should have picked up from the rock lab this morning as a matter of fact. Except that I forgot. You see, I had a brain once. Then I forgot it somewhere and I've been screwed ever since. Hopefully I'll remember to pick it up tomorrow, so I can get on with the important business of doing the photo micrographs and examining it in detail under the microscope.

Over the weekend, Paul (the guy in charge of the rock lab) glued the wonderful flat face that I'd made on my pet rock onto a glass slide with epoxy. Epoxy is the go-to glue for rocks, and has the benefit of having a very index of refraction, since everything is in face viewed through a cloud of glue once you get your slide put together. This is important since one of the identifiers used to discern minerals is what kind of relief they have - which is to say how much they stand out from the epoxy. Quartz and feldspar barely stand out at all, while garnet and olivine have very sharp outlines against the epoxy. So this basically means that quartz and feldspar have indexes of refraction very close to epoxy, while garnet and olivine don't.

My task was to get rid of most of the rock glued on to the slide, then. All but about 30 microns of it, to be more exact. I started out by cutting most of the rock off using another diamond saw. Then over the course of about 15 minutes, I used a grinding wheel to take layers off of the remaining rock until what I was left with was basically transparent. The point of a thin section, of course, is to have a piece of rock so thin that light can shine through it; hard to image a translucent piece of rock, huh? I was doing pretty well with it. The rock I chose, Kimberlite, is actually very soft as igneous rocks go, partially due to its high calcite and hydrate mineral content.

The hardest, scariest part was actually manually grinding down the last little bit, using the glass plate and very fine carbide grinding powder. What makes that the scary part is that you have to constantly stop and check to make certain that you haven't taken off too much, and that you're polishing it up evenly. I actually lost a strip off of one of the edges of my thin section because I didn't stop to check soon enough. Kimberlite is soft, soft stuff. I had to be much, much more careful going forward, since if I'd lost much more off the slide I would have had to start over and make a new thin section. In the end, I managed to get it fairly even, thankfully!

Before I left the lab, Paul let me check the section under his microscope, using cross-polarized light. It was pretty indeed - lots of calcite and phlogopite mica, as well as a gigantic opaque. All in all I'm very pleased with how it turned out, except that almost all of the olivine in my specimen has been serpentinized - which is to say that it's been exposed to enough weathering that the original olivine has altered in to serpentine. There's a spot of remnant olivine here and there, but most of it's serpentine, which isn't nearly as pretty. I was hoping that I'd get more olivine, but I would have had to really dig in to the outcrop to get some, and I didn't want to do that. At least the rest of my minerals still look really pretty!

Even real Mayans think the 2012 Apocalypse is BS

2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist

It also sounds like the Mayans who aren't too busy trying not to starve to death are also getting very annoyed about the whole thing. Considering this is basically the white people stealing a bit of their culture and then shellacking it with the Christian idea of a global apocalypse, well, I'd be really annoyed myself. Particularly when said thieving white people are dishonest hacks that are trying to make money by scaring people half to death, or just by making really stupid-looking disaster movies about it.

And sadly, I bet no one will listen to a real Mayan calling it BS. This is one of those unsinkable (and stupid) rubber duckies - if you call BS on one disaster theory, another springs up in its place. Or the believers in it just ignore you and move on. Which I honestly wouldn't have a problem about it if they weren't apparently running around and scaring the heck out of fourth graders with this stuff.

The article does a pretty good job of summing up a bunch of the disaster BS that's going around and at leas throwing in some quotes to let us know that scientists think it's total BS. Phil Plait even puts in an appearance!

Most of the 2012 stuff hinges on astronomy, which is why I don't have much to say about it. I just listen to the lovely and talented Dr. Plait, nod, and say "F*** yeah!" at appropriate times. But thanks to Yahoo News, I now know one of the proposed geological ways the world is supposedly going to blow up.

The stupid. It burns:

Another History Channel program titled "Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days" says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a "pole shift."

"The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster," a narrator proclaims. "Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe."

History Channel, I would demand that you feel ashamed, but we've known for a long time that you don't have any shame to begin with. Anyone who has taken even the most basic geology course should know that this is complete, gleeful fabrication. The entire mantle of the Earth shifting in days? Are these people on drugs? The part of the mantle known as the asthenosphere is capable of plastic deformation, but it's made of hot rocks under high pressure, not freaking marshmallow fluff. The mantle has convection currents that move the crustal plates, but come on - when we're getting a few centimeters a year out of one of these babies, we think it's really cooking. India is experiencing the most rapid movement out of any of the plates, and it's moving at 5 cm/year. Not exactly the stuff of horror.

Also, to the best of our knowledge, the magnetic field is determined by currents within the Earth's core. Not the mantle. Not even close.

Again, I repeat - are these people on drugs?

A couple of cool things for Tuesday!

50 Years of Exploration - Space exploration, that is. This infographic appeared in National Geographic and it's very, very cool as a representation of where we've been in our own neighborhood and just how many times.

Vegetarian Spider is first of its kind: This sounded pretty cool to me, but what do I know, I'm just a geologist. I sent it to my friend David, who is in school to become a biology teacher. His response was: "Oh my god, this is huge! Spiders taxonomically speaking were partly isolated based on their predatory natures. To find a spider that isn't a predator...that's impressive. I wonder if they've done genetic sequencing yet, and if so where it fits in the heiarchy."

So yes, apparently this is even cooler than I thought. A vegetarian spider. And not just that, a vegetarian spider that (maybe) chemically pretends to be an acacia ant so that the real ants leave it to eat its salad unmolested.

Hooray, evolution! The diversity of life never ceases to amaze me.

Earth Science Week is next week!

Happy Earth Science Week in advance! Make sure that you hug a geologist! Or a climatologist or ecologist, if you must find a substitute.

Every year, Earth Science Week has a theme, with a lot of support from government agencies (such as NASA and NOAA), and professional groups (such as AAPG and AAAS). Lots of very cool stuff in general for promoting science, science education, and science careers.

What I think is even cooler, though, is that ESW does a theme every year, with materials gathered to provide education for that theme. This year's is "Understanding Climate," which I think is a really good one. Getting a grasp of the basics behind the complex interactions that make the climate is important for everyone, and then we can also talk about climate change, its importance, and implications. (Because there is a consensus. Thanks, IPCC.)

I wonder how many students will actually get to participate this year, and how many have in the past. It's something I worry about. There are a lot of good opportunities in something like this, for kids to learn. But considering the horror stories I hear from my friend who teachers at a high poverty school, I'm forced to wonder if kids like the ones in her class will get to benefit and learn. I know for certain that there are kids in every class that would love to learn more about the Earth; when I visited her classroom last year to talk a little bit about rocks, some of the kids were really excited about science. But when you've got the government (and the school administration) breathing down your neck about the reading, writing and math (the only subjects tested under No Child Left Behind) I think it means a lot of kids have and are going to miss out on things like Earth Science Week.

Modeling Meanders

Alfalfa Sprouts Key To Discovering How Meandering Rivers Form

Some very cool stuff from the world of Geomorphology. Now that we're realizing that channelizing rivers sometimes isn't the best idea (well, as far as the flood plains and nearby shores are concerned, it's never a good idea) and trying to get them back to their natural state, we've never managed to copy nature. We can put a man on the moon, but we can't make a meandering river, to paraphrase. So this is some very cool modeling on how the process works, which means some day we might be able to get the meanders right.

*Quick terminology: Meandering rivers are those wandering, looping rivers we're so familiar with. Such as The Amazon or the Mississippi or the Nile. You're probably not familiar with braided rivers unless you live near the mountains or other sources of extremely coarse sediment, but here are a couple examples: Waimakariri River, drainage near the Yukon River. Basically, braided rivers have a lot of in-channel sediment deposits that the river cuts through in a multitude of small channels.

I definitely want to see if I can get my hot little hands on a copy of their results. It sounds extremely interesting. (Though I'm sure all the really technical stuff will make my head spin.) Also, the researcher does bring up some good questions about Mars and Titan. We can be pretty sure that neither place has or ever had the verdant banks that would help build meanders. So the real question is, how would meanders form in an environment without vegetation? What would provide the bank stability that lets the point bars grow? Maybe that'll be the next experiment, after they're done with their alfalfa jungle.

By the way? Best use for Alfalfa sprouts outside of a turkey sandwich. Truly.

A Girl and Her Pet Rock (1)

One of the cool things we're doing for this field class is cutting a thin section of a rock that we picked up on one of the field trips. Chuck, our teacher, has been calling these rocks our "pet rocks."

I picked my pet rock up at the Green Mountain Kimberlite. And named it Bobby. Yesterday it was time to cut Bobby up to start the creation of the thin section. This involved going to the rock lab in the basement of the geology building, which is an interesting place filled with all sort of intimidating power tools. Some of the saws would probably be more at home in horror movies.

Actually, I started out with three chunks of kimberlite, then showed the benevolent dictator of the rock lab, Paul, all three. Since I've never cut a thin section before, I had no idea which would be best. He immediately picked the smallest of the samples, which was also the "chunkiest" since it would be easiest to cut.

I put on a plastic apron (flecked with rock dust rather than the horror movie alternative, thankfully) and some extremely silly looking protective glasses that fit over my own. Paul turned on the saw, which was very, very scary looking. It was a water-cooled affair, so there was a constant drip of water on to the blade. He explained that it was a diamond-bladed saw, though different from the ones most people are used to. The strangest part is that it's actually very difficult to cut yourself with this particular saw. Paul even touched the blade a couple times while it was running, just to show this. At least as far as flesh goes, it's yielding enough that your skin and wobbly bits will just flex out of the way of the blade. So if you want to cut yourself, you really have to jam your finger on to it. Or apparently come at it fingernail first, because the saw will just rip through anything solid like tissue paper.

I was very glad I'd recently trimmed my fingernails.

I was pretty intimidated by the saw at first, but it helped that one of my classmates went before me so I could see how he was doing things. I'm not a big fan of power tools, and I'm not a hands-on kind of person.*** My version of being handy is, when forced by circumstance, fishing out the little tool kit my dad gave me and picking up a screw driver. This only happens when my fingernail, my scissors, and my fiance's pocket knife have all failed to defeat a screw. The only power tool I've ever used is a screwdriver. I've seen UHF way too many times to be comfortable around saws.

But anyway, once I worked myself up to actually using the saw, it went really well. I sliced Bobby in half length-wise, then trimmed the half the stayed intact down to the right size to fit on a slide. The other half (the thinner half, I think) broke apart as I was running the rock through the saw. I even kept the cut pretty even.

Though of course, a circular saw is not nearly a delicate enough tool to make the sort of even cut necessary for a thin section. When all is said and done, the thin section is going to be so thin that light shows through it. The sort of thin that you measure with microns. (Like your average runway model.) So once the gross cutting was done with the saw, I powered it down and then basically sanded the surface completely flat. You use two different grades of grit on a glass plate, coarse then fine, and basically just sand the thing down until it's absolutely flat and smooth.

It's funny, but Paul spent a lot of time telling me and my classmate to not "pet" the smooth surface when rinsing the grit off. And as laughable as that is, it's hard to do. When something's that smooth and polished, your fingers just itch to touch it. It's bad to do so, though, since oils from your hands interfere with the epoxy that gets used later.

So that was the first step. On Monday, step two!



*** Unless you count the time in Fire Academy, but I'd still say there's a big difference between cutting a car apart with hydraulic sheers and getting your fingers anywhere remotely close to a spinning saw blade.

I love the Ig Nobels

A bit belated, but such is the life of a college student who is attempting to beat her Worst Jane Eyre Essay Ever in to something a bit tamer, hopefully even a Not Quite The Worst Jane Eyre Essay Ever. If I'm lucky. I may just have to settle for the I Was Going To Set It On Fire But Realized That Some Grade Is Better Than No Grade So Here It Is Try Not To Let It Drive You Mad And Summon Dark Elder Gods Jane Eyre Essay.

I was catching up on my blogs and got hit with the reminder that the Ig Nobel awards have once again come and gone for the year! I'm looking forward to when the full audio of it comes out. In the past, it's been via Science Friday on NPR, so it'll be a bit of a wait. But it'll also be worth it.

Io9 has a detailed roundup of the winners. There's also some extra fun currently on the front page of The Annals of Improbably Research, spread over several posts that I am far too lazy to link to individually.

I love the Ig Nobels, deeply. I think it's a great bit of PR for science. Yes, it points out bizarre research, but frankly if people are going to complain about how ridiculous it is that scientists get paid actual money to study people getting beer bottles smashed over their heads, they're going to do it no matter what. These are bitter, sad people who wouldn't know the joy of inquiry if it bit them on the behind, and I would go so far as to say are probably just mad that they couldn't find a way to have fun while making a living. These are also, as I mentioned before when talking about the studies done in the Mt. St. Helens area, people who think that reality actually complies with common sense and our own assumptions, which is just silly.

Really, I think the Ig Nobels reach the people who still remember how much fun it was, in grade school, to make a fake volcano and then giggle gleefully as it exploded all over their nice new pants. (Not that kids necessarily get to have that much fun these days.) You know, the ones with the cute frogs on them. These people may not be scientists now, but you don't have to be a scientist to love science and see the fun and excitement in it. So the Ig Nobels are really just a post-it note on the nose of life that says, "Remember: Science is fun!"

My favorite part of the Ig Nobels is actually the 24/7 lectures. I love them. Love, love, love. To the point that I save old recordings of the awards and fast forward through them to listen to the little lectures. It's fun to hear very learned people try to describe what they do in a rushed, breathless voice, and the seven word studies are always absolutely hilarious. Paul Krugman is this year's wonderful example.

Love it!