What we do during I.S. Meetings

I had an I.S. Meeting with Sam Spencer (’11) this morning. This is what we did:

Sam is working on the geochemistry of a ~200 million year old diabase sheet that intruded into a rift basin in southeast Pennsylvania. When you think of geochemistry, you might think of white lab coats and fancy equipment, but the first step in any geochemistry project is to crush and powder the samples. It’s a dirty job, but I think it’s one of the best parts of geochemistry. Today, Sam took the hammer to a sample we affectionately call the “potato.” It’s a dense, coarse-grained mafic rock that shows spheroidal weathering, which creates piles of brown, rounded potato-like rocks in the field.