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Photo of the Week #49

October 19, 2015

This week’s photo is from my personal research and shows a precipitate that I generated in the lab one day of AgI (silver iodide) for analysis of 129I by accelerator mass spectrometry.

I felt though that I wanted to verify the purity of the AgI so I quickly threw in on our scanning electron microscope to a) check the chemistry and b) take a picture. The image below shows an amalgam of AgI crystals with a scale of 20 microns at 600 times magnification.

AgI-1_SEM

By the way, to any fellow Canadians reading this post. Please go vote today and be a part of our democracy!!

Geology Photo of the Week #48

October 6, 2015

This edition of the photo of the approximate week (plus or minus 1 – sorry for my tardiness) is very cool in that it shows when earth processes that are invisible suddenly become very visible. In this case the submarine volcano, El Hierro, is erupting and instead of the usual bursting lava and fireworks display the only evidence of the turmoil going on is this discolouration at the ocean’s surface caused by volcanic ash particles and gases. Despite the submarine location of the volcano it’s activity was by no means hidden as numerous earthquakes indicated that an eruption was imminent.

Suspended volcanic material and gasses caused differents colors in the sea water during the 2011-2012 submarine eruption in El Hierro (Canary Island, Spain)

Suspended volcanic material and gasses caused differents colors in the sea water during the 2011-2012 submarine eruption in El Hierro (Canary Island, Spain) by Laura García-Cañada. (Source)