You are browsing the archive for labs Archives - Magma Cum Laude.
21 May 2009
It’s course evaluation time!*
And so far I’ve seen (paraphrased, of course): Labs/TA were horribleLabs/TA were okayLoved labLabs were informative and relatively harmless (I would have laughed even more if it had said ‘mostly harmless’ and referenced the HGTG)TA is elitist (Because I wouldn’t give this person a second make-up date for a quiz they missed, never mind that I didn’t have to give them a first one)TA is responsible and patientBoring lab material …
28 January 2009
Best labs for introductory geology courses?
My department will be restructuring some of their introductory geology labs soon, and I was asked my opinion of the labs that I taught last semester. I was pretty brutal about some of them: they were difficult both to teach and to get the students to understand. When you’re spending most of your time apologizing for the shortcomings of a flow chart that the students are supposed to be using …
24 August 2008
Accretionary Wedge #12: Geology as a connector science
Hooray! I finally have both a working computer and internet connection. Definite cause for celebration, since I can now get back to blogging – at least as much as grad school allows, that is. Even more cause for celebration: This is post #100! I think it’s fitting that it should be an Accretionary Wedge entry, since at least part of the reason I started blogging was to connect with other …
17 January 2008
Residence time of lab samples
Here’s an situation I’ve been dealing with for a while. During the research I did for my undergraduate thesis in the summer of 2006, I collected a number of samples to use for Ar-Ar dating, with the intention that I would actually accompany them to a lab and learn the processes involved in mineral separation, irradiation, analysis, etc. Fast forward to January and February of 2007, where I (after much …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.