Climate Change: Core Sample Lab, 9-12-10

Core samples and mud everywhere! At first glance, looking at feet and feet of mud samples from Odell Lake didn’t seem like the most fun activity. Little did we know we could truly act like real geologists, taking magnetic readings, putting together professional-looking photos and looking for organic life in the middle of these long, muddy samples. We each had different tasks that, together, would form a well-established report of the cores. My task was photographer. This put my years of photography training and photography schooling to work, just kidding. The task was a bit tedious but relatively straight forward. Taking detailed pictures of each core in stages to make sure no part was missed. Making sure everything was labeled correctly so there would be no confusion.  The next step was taking the separate pictures of the samples, three to a core, and splicing them together to make a visual of the core sample in its entirety. Having never used photo shop before, the TA, Stephanie Jarvis, and I worked through the confusion of technology and eventually got everything working.

Everyone continued to work examining and putting together the samples.

Other groups had the task of taking magnetic readings of the samples. The process looked confusing, but with the data collected, much could be told of the magnetic susceptibility of each sample.