I have been posting a lot lately about the Yukon. So for a change of pace the photo for this week comes from Australia…about as far from the Yukon as it is possible to get. This is a photo looking down on a mat of stromatolites. They are the round shapes poking up through the limestone.
Stromatolites in the Flinders Ranges near Port Augusta, South Australia (Photo: Matt Herod)
This week we have a photo of the something that has been on my mind a lot for the last little while and will continue to be on my mind in the comings years months weeks. Of course I am speaking of lab work and particularly the new iodine extraction line that I have been developing. Over the past few months I have had a 0% success rate with this damn thing. However, thanks to the fresh ideas and experience of a new radiochemistry professor in our department I have now had some success. In fact, I was so excited by this success that I did one of these:
Anyway, now that some progress has been made it is time to duplicate, refine and start using the line for actual samples. Thus, the photo of the week is a picture of the line that I now get a warm fuzzy feeling looking at as opposed to the former sinking and depressed feeling. Hopefully it lasts…..
My iodine extraction line for solid samples.
Cheers,
Matt
Hi Everyone,
Sorry this post is a bit late. Things have been crazy the last few days in the lab. I am trying to get enough done in the next few weeks to submit an abstract to a conference and I still have quite a long way to go. The 19th photo of week was taken by me at the Hogan Sand Pit just north of Ottawa near Cantley, Quebec. It is a pretty interesting sedimentological feature called a “flame structure”. This feature forms underwater when the overlying pressure of the sediment above a lower unit, in the case it is sand over clay, forces the underlying unit upward. A good analogy for this is if you think about the plumes of sediment that fly up when you step in mud underwater. The downward pressure of your bodyweight forces the sediment to fly and curl upward. Obviously, this is an instantaneous process, whereas the one pictured occurred at a slower pace. However, the mechanism that creates the “flame” is the same.
In this case the sediments pictured are glacial outwash sediments deposited as the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted 10,000 years ago. It is interesting to note that the presence of a flame structure indicates that the sediments were deposited underwater in a pro-glacial lake setting as opposed to a sub-aerial outwash plain like a sandur. Furthermore, the interbedded nature of the sand and clay could used to interpret the sort of depositional conditions in front of the glacier.
Cheers,
Matt
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Wow! January is flying by! We are already in the last full week of January since next Friday is Feb 1. It has been a very busy first month of 2013 for me. My goal this semester is to finish my lab work by the summer, which would allow me to focus on writing the 4 papers that I have collected partial data for. These four are in varying degrees of completion from the merely conceptual to actually having a semi-outline written. However, they all have some lab work done and lots more remaining. They are all using completely separate datasets as well. This means I have about 50-60 water samples to extract iodine from and about the same number of soil samples…although I have to get my solid sample extraction method done. Happily, I think I can write a methodology paper from that work so that is some reward. But enough of me whining about my daunting workload. You came here because of the misleading title about some photo and I don’t want to disappoint.
Therefore, the photo of the week is of the accelerator part of the accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS). Pictured below is a 3 million volt particle accelerator that is located at IsoTrace the University of Ottawa’s AMS facility. It is getting up there in age, in fact it is well over 40 years old, but that does not mean it is garbage just yet. Although we are getting a new one next year.
The 3 million volt particle accelertor at IsoTrace that I do my analysis on. (Photo: Matt Herod)
The photo below is the part of the AMS that I have christened the “beverage section”. This is because of the coffee can that is attached to the machine. I don’t remember why it is there, but it does have a purpose. There are also tea strainers located there too, but they are not pictured. As anyone that has worked with older equipment knows it needs lots and lots of TLC and most older machines are duct taped and jerry rigged together in order to keep them working. The AMS is no exception.
The “beverage section” of the machine that goes to the high energy gas ionization detector for heavy isotopes. Yes, that is a coffee can attached the machine. From the perspective of the photo atoms are coming towards you. (Photo: Matt Herod)
Thanks for reading…now back to work (directed at me, not you)
Matt
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