Guest Blogger: Mary Reinthal
If you were to poll the campus about their fall break, not many would say that they spent 20 hours over 2 days in an FTIR lab analyzing glass chips for volatile content. But if you were to ask geology senior Mary Reinthal and her advisor Dr. Meagen Pollock, that’s exactly what they would say. Fly in on a Monday; analyze samples at University of Massachusetts Amherst Tuesday and Wednesday; fly out Thursday. It was a lot of work, but somebody had to do it (for their Independent Study). The time was spent looking at the volatile spectra from individual, doubly polished glass chips collected from British Columbia, Canada.
Not a lot of windows in the FTIR lab, so Mary had to look at glass chips.
After all that time in the lab, a lot of data were collected (yay!). These numbers will hopefully help us understand the evolution of glaciovolcanic tindars in British Columbia. Until then, however, these data will to be sifted through and looked at more closely as the semester continues.
Mary measuring thickness of glass wafers. To understand the bigger picture of volatile effects on eruptions you have to look small. Like micron-scale small.
Of course, the visit to U-Mass. Amherst wasn’t all science and glass chips. After finishing a 9-hour stint in the lab on Wednesday, Dr. Pollock and Mary ventured to Concord, Massachusetts to visit Walden Pond. In short, a truly liberal arts education was had by all.
Mary and Thoreau pondering life and science.