Open magma systems and a Mothra on top

So for the past few days I have been diligently working on my Geochemistry paper and on my Entomology independent project.  It has been very slow going on both beyond initial framework setup for the writing.  I usually don't have as much trouble as I have when writing, and the problems I have had are entirely new to me.

For my geochemistry paper, I have had to worry for the first time in a long time about: plagiarism.  See, with the crystal samples given to us by Dr. R I have no idea what the locality they were taken from was like at all.  I've certainly been to Valles Caldera enough times, but never have I taken any samples of my own from the caldera's formations, and with his published papers he has given us to use as reference, it's had to say anything without having to paraphrase and cannibalize heavily from his writing.  My interpretations are entirely my own but everything from the background and methodology to the major sources I am citing are all heavily borrowed from Dr. R's papers.

The ten grains we successfully analyzed match Dr. R's conclusions that the 1.61 Ma Otowi Member we are studying originated from an open magma system.  The difficulty for me now is how to balance respect for my teacher's publications with further reading I've done and my general ignorance of the member beyond its geographical location.  Dr. R suggested in the papers he gave us that "sweated" wall rock was principally responsible for the open system dynamics we seem to see, but I've come across a few other papers suggesting that an injection of magma spurred the eruption and contributed to the variance we see in rubidium-strontium isotope ratios to suggest an open system to us.  Now I have to pull all of it together into a draft Dr R is willing to buy into, and still not see enough of his own papers to blow a whistle on the derivative writing I currently have.

Meanwhile, my entomology project is significantly less demanding and although I realized I ought to start writing 9 days before the due date (April 23), I have more than half of it already done.  I've drawn and written three quick comics (he asked for strips but I don't know what to make of that), a movie review of Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) and four website reviews (just a paragraph each).  The website reviews were surprisingly fun, and I got to talk about the Prehistoric Planet Store and the USDA Insect Sound Reference Library.  Mainly though, any excuse to watch a Godzilla movie and get points on an assignment for it is ideal.

The next project I'll have to undertake is my Colorado Plateau poster.  I still haven't settled on what I would like to write on.  Part of me wants to deal with the boundary of the Interior Seaway and the Sevier Orogenic Belt.  The other part of me wants to go nuts with the inter-fingering of the Mancos Shale and the Drip Tank Member, which are really impressive just due to the dynamics of the shoreline of the Great Interior Seaway.  I'm not sure what I'll do, but I ought to choose quickly.  I just don't want to fall into the trap of using my professor's publications for this assignment as well, though Dr. L has some really interesting papers dealing specifically with the Cretaceous...

Overall, not a lot is going on in my life besides writing and getting ready for finals when the time comes.  These papers and projects are a huge part of my grade though (equivalent to a full exam in Entomology) so I really want to get them done and done right.  Meanwhile the weather just gets better and better here and I'm stuck inside typing away when every instinct worth listening to in me wants to head outside and take a literal breather.  Life goes on, and I'll definitely have the summer so things could be better but I'm doing really well as my second year nears to its conclusion and I'm really proud of that.

Photo Credit
Ron Blakey, Northern Arizona University Geology. "Paleogeographic map of the Late Cretaceous (75 Ma)". Link

The laser tags me back for my neglect

So it's been a long stretch of time again since I've posted anything, and with the uneventful spring break I had there really isn't much excuse why I didn't jot something down with everything that has been happening.

School has been pretty time consuming lately, and with a sudden urgency to write papers coming due before the end of the school year I will be doing a lot more writing on my Geochemistry project, Colorado Plateau poster, and some Entomology papers for my elective class than any recreation writing.  I have a lot of anxiety right now about all that writing simply because I haven't started on any of it, but I hope to remedy that by the weekend.

I've been really happy to be learning about the (TIMS) mass spectrometer and the chemistry that goes with it.  I'm reluctant to be such an easy catch for Dr. R, but geochemistry has really caught my attention this semester and if I work for him this summer I will probably get even more into his type of work.  Next semester should be a good time to test how much I really enjoy it though, when I'm taking more sedimentary based classes.

My schedule for next semester is essentially complete after today.  I have GEOL 399 Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology, GEOL 420 Stratigraphy and Sedimentology, GEOL 465 Isotope "Geoghemistry", GEOL Structural Geology, and GEOG 381 Cartography and GIS.  This will be the heaviest 15 credits I have ever seen assembled together, but I certainly won't be working next semester so I feel that I persevere.  It feels odd to have all of my general education credits nearly covered as this semester comes to a close.  My only non-departmental elective I haven't covered is an engineering or programming course, but the GIS course could be covered under the new catalog if my sources are right...

Thursday was an unusual day considering the past month.  I had been severely neglecting my LIBS work by doing Geochemistry work and today I finally got back to my LIBS data.  I hadn't realized that I had 12 data sets just waiting to be analyzed so it was long overdue to sit down with Dr. M and run the Unscrambler software to analyze my spectra.  Running those 2100 shots with 13701 spectra each took a long time though, and so I was at school from 8:50 to 6 with only one two hour class to go to, and I was sad to miss out on the laser tag event the school was hosting that night.  I guess when you trade up in laser class it's hard to go back to the simpler tools of learning you had as a child.

I have had some very good times lately though, and I have to say this is a very happy time in my life right now.  Coming off of spring break after visiting with a lot my good friends back at home and taking it relatively easy in the shadow of midterms, I can't complain.   I may have two midterms next week already and due dates on papers quickly approaching but this may be the golden semester compared to what in my future classes.  All I know is that tomorrow will be a relief from today's nonsense, and over the weekend I am going to make some serious dents in those papers!

Photo Credit
Cornell Geology Department Facilities. "Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer"

The Sydney Traveler. "Code Red" (for Code Red Leisure Centre)