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The rock and ice mechanics lab at Lamont-Doherty is led by PIs Christine McCarthy and Ben Holtzman. Now, more than ever, we are in the process of growing our lab and building our experimental program. Along with a team of postdocs, undergrads, grads, techs, and longtime staff engineer Ted, we are rehabilitating and revamping some of the old equipment and building and buying new rigs for exciting new experiments on both rock and ice. You can follow along with our progress here.

Sunday 30 October 2016

Open House 2016

For this year's open house we went with a whole new format. Instead of cramming people into our little lab, we took up a space in one of the big tents. Here Mike talks about friction and uses our sliding blocks with different grit sandpaper to demonstrate roughness.
 Meanwhile, Rob mans the elastic properties booth, where we've got a piece of rock wired up with strain gauges. He asks guests to test their strength at squeezing a rock. This year we added a rubber cube as a reference and even went with a digital display (fancy!).

Additionally we opened up the back window of the lab where the cryofriction rig is housed and allowed people to "Step Right Up" and peer in to see an actual experiment in action.
Here Ted talks to the folks outside the window and demonstrates all of the components that go into a friction experiment.




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