WOOSTER, OH – After a month of hard work, the Iceland Keck group parted ways on Saturday. We arrived in Wooster immediately after returning from Iceland and put in a solid week of work in the lab, preparing our samples for thin sections and XRF analyses. In one week, the students produced over 120 thin section billets, powders, and pressed pellets, and almost as many glass beads. Even though the work was tedious and the hours were long, I think we’re all glad that we’ll have data at the start of the school year. Well done, team!
A dessicator full of pressed pellets ready to analyze on the XRF.
Challenges of lab work. We tracked the number of samples that were prepared. This student prepped 20 pressed pellets "of varying degrees of brilliance + some epic failures."
Katharine works her magic on the scale.
Erica grinds the saw marks off of her sample.
Nina presses a brilliant pellet.
Thad oxidizes his samples in the muffle furnace.
Emily celebrates a glass bead that hasn't cracked.
Brennan and Katie troubleshoot the GIS file.
Of course, our work isn’t complete. Once we have the chemistry and thin section observations, we can put the data into the context of the mapped field relationships to understand the volcanic history of one of the oldest central volcanoes in Iceland. We’ll have much to present at the Keck Symposium in the spring and are already looking forward to our reunion.
Congratulations, Keck Iceland! Love Brennan’s classic computer-issues expression. So who’s going to run all those XRF analyses?
Looks like the XRF is has its work cut out for it, glad to hear the department has that machine in its lab now!!!!! Reminds me of the week Rob, Adam, Dr. Pollock and Myself spent at Dickinson College.