I would be lying if I said that my Master's hasn't been frustrating. Due to unfortunate circumstances well beyond my control, I have not been able to collect the main chunk of my data until now, 9 months after I originally planned to. Things like this happen in research, I get it, but it doesn't make it any less irritating.
Thanks to a big grant that I was awarded I was lucky enough to be able travel to another lab to carry out my analyses, where I was able to use the same technique that originally prompted my move to Newfoundland. So in the last few weeks of March I embarked on another trip across the continent, this time to Washington State University in Pullman. Cue the lesson in US geography where I explain that Washington State is not the same as Washington DC.
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A pleasant change from the snow and wind of Newfoundland.
You'd think it was Spring or something. |
St John to Toronto. Toronto to Denver. Denver to Spokane. Drive from Spokane to Pullman. 12 hours later and 54% through A Song Of Ice and Fire I arrived at my student residence. Pullman is a relatively small town where the student population dominates the town (sounds familiar...). It's more distinctly campus based versus St Andrews however, concentrated atop College Hill. The red brick buildings are utilitarian and lacking in the rich history I miss so deeply of my alma mater, but are certainly more pleasing to the eye than the concrete jungle of MUN.
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The rolling fertile hills of the Palouse, the prairie land surrounding Pullman,
home to some of the best grain-growing land in the States.
They don't call it the Fife of the NW US for nothing.... |
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| Bryan Tower as the sun was beginning to fade. |
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I didn't say the place was devoid of concrete, but the Earth Science
building afforded fabulous views of the town. |
Geochemical data collection more often than not involves sitting in front of a machine and multiple monitors in a windowless room with no concept of time, and this was no exception. Well I did have a window at least. And the cool thing was I got to use a laser. Using a technique called Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry, or LA-ICP-MS for short I basically pick a point on one of my tiny crystals (see previous post http://northerngeologist.blogspot.ca/2013/06/how-to-be-geochronologist-part-1.html), press Fire on the computer, which makes me feel like some sort of maniacal world leader, and I can analyse my samples for various different isotopes. Depending on which isotope I analyse I can gain different information, like how old the grain is, or where it came from. We can normally do one set of isotopes at a time, but thanks to a new Split Stream technique (LASS) and some very "high tech" kit, we can measure two at the same time.
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| The "high tech" kit that splits my sample to two different machines, allowing me to measure two lots of isotopes. Securely fastened to the table with tape. |
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| Makes my work seem so much more dangerous than it is. |
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Creating faces in the grains and then pretending to shoot them square
it in the head is what gets you through pulling a late night shift. |
So for 10 long days I shot my laser, crunched the numbers that the machine spit out at me and created more spreadsheets than I know what to do with. Long nights, stupid Excel mistakes, machine malfunctions. All part and parcel of analytical work. I've done the point and shooting for other people before, but until you work on your own samples, doing your own analysis and data reduction you don't quite realise how much work it all entails to get one pretty page of numbers. I learnt a hell of a lot.
Despite all the work I did manage to have some play. The highlight of the Pullman tourist scene is the Paradise Creek Brew Pub. Housed in the historic 84 year-old Post Office is a collection of weird and wonderful ales, my favourite being the Huckleberry Pucker, a fabulously sharp, tart beer made from huckleberries. Anyone can make a decent IPA, but it's these unorthodox ales that make certain breweries great.
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| Pretty cool building. |
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| Retains a lot of the Post Office features. |
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The beers I managed to get through, only about
a third of the way of their repertoire. |
As well immersing myself in the local beer culture (I actually spent less time there than I had hoped for) I also found myself completely engrossed by the whole college pride thing that a lot of the American universities seem to have going on. Maybe it was partly to do with the March Madness basketball tournament being on, although WSU weren't in it. Part of it was also probably due to the fact that my morning walk took me past Martin Stadium, the University's (American) Football field. Or it could've been that everyone on campus was wearing some sort of University branded clothing. Either way, I totally bought into it. A long browse at the University shop between analysis runs saw me come away with a branded T-shirt and a lanyard. Go Cougars.
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| I really like the WSU Cougars logo. |
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| This statue, all lit up, was terrifying at night. |
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| Just one of the training grounds, with Martin Stadium in the background. |
It was a shame that I couldn't get out and see more of the state while I was out there. If I could drive, I might've had the opportunity, but alas. While not a particularly exotic trip, I was in a beautiful part of the world, doing work that I would've been unable to do at MUN, learning how to collaborate with scientists at other institutions. I might never have visited Washington had it done been for the mess at MUN, and I'm a kind of "everything happens for a reason" type of gal. It was a hard, tiring, informative and rewarding week. Now that I'm back home in the schizophrenic climate of Newfoundland it is my job to make sense of the numbers that I came away with. My graduate seminar is looming, but thankfully, as you can probably tell by this post, I like talking, especially about my rocks. Wish me luck.
