Cheers to Dr. Zaman!

 Although the lab has of course graduated many a student over the years, this May was the graduation of my very first grad student. On the auspicious day of April 1, Mahi successfully defended his thesis! In addition to Sean, Meredith and I, outside reviewers Colin Meyers (Dartmouth) and Geoff Collins (Wheaton College) were on his committee (Geoff in person, Colin zooming in). He did an excellent job both in describing his dissertation to an audience with varied backgrounds, but also in defending the science questions we had. 

We had a party back in the lab's conference room, where he got to don and sign the official DEES gown...

Mahi had many of his friends and family in attendance, with more family members zooming in.

Cheers to Dr. Zaman!

And a few months later we were able to celebrate again formally. It was my first time walking in the parade of faculty and it was a big honor to be allowed to hood Mahi in the official ceremony. 

Ted Retirement Party

 After a long and exciting career with us, Ted is retiring. We threw a small barbecue going away party for him, inviting many of the people at Lamont (or retired) that have worked alongside Ted through the years. 

A case of rolling rocks (historical drink of the lab) was donated by Chris Marone.

A round of shots may or may not have been consumed while I was away at a meeting.

Even the geese (who are fed regularly by Ted) came by to give their regards.

And Hatsuki arranged this amazing tribute, getting input and old photos from loads of people from over the years. 

Shots from the machine shop

Just a collection of shots from the machine shop:

Undergrad intern Claire McGillis helps machine a new cryostat: 

That time Elenore came to the lab and Ted got her to work on the old triax

Vincent using the surface grinder to prep side rocks for his ice-on-rock friction project

Ted explains the surface grinder to Dan, who is helping prep samples for carbonation experiments.

I make Seth stop and show off his first attempt at freezing in a transducer to capture seismicity during sliding of ice on till.

Hatsuki begins fabricating a box within which she will make a spray foam insulation mold.

 

Reassembling the old biax

When me moved to the machine shop, aka the Instrument Building, the biax needed to be taken apart. And there it sat on a pallet in the warehouse for years. But I didn't want Ted to retire before we put it back together. He was, after all, the only one who could decipher the specs. 

sort of....

With Charlotte's help, the pieces were all located and a plan put in motion.

And with Abhishek manning the chain fall, inner parts were eventually placed inside the outer parts. 

We would probably need to redo the motor and definitely the control system if we were to use it again, but it is now successfully reassembled and awaiting some new project.

Open House 2024!

 This year we did a few new things at the annual Open House. There was a collection of Lunar samples and meteorites visiting us from the Natural History Museum, so they asked for some us to be inside Comer to talk about rocks and minerals. Abhishek and I took turns describing this modest collection of rock types.

It was fun to talk about Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary rocks. I also tried to sneak in some info about Europa and the Clipper mission (which had just launched the week before) whenever I could. 

Meanwhile out in the tent, we had our usual collection of earthquake related exhibits.  Also I upped my game this year and instead of just the subduction cake, I went all in and made a cake for each plate boundary: divergent, convergent, and transform.

In general I would say that the cakes were a big hit. But I'll admit that it's hard to keep their focus on the science and plate tectonics when their eyes and minds are going "cake, cake, cake, when is she going to give me the cake".

Open House 2023

Despite the rain, we had yet another great Open House at Lamont this year. Here are some shots from the day.

Here Jake talks about the mechanics of an earthquake with our slider block set up.

Shradha takes over later in the day. She only just arrived with our group and she jumped in after hearing Jake's spiel just once and handled the crowds like a pro.

Hatsuki explains the process of liquefaction during an earthquake at our little shaky table.

High School intern Vincent takes over on the shaky table later in the day and also does a great job.

Charlotte explains elasticity and strain gauges to a man very prepared for the weather.

And finally Nick teaches about plate tectonics and plate boundaries behind my subduction zone cake.

Summer 2023 in the lab

 Some highlights from the lab this summer. We had a crew of three high school interns: Vincent, Maya, and Sam. Vincent was exploring ice sliding on different rock types. Maya used active acoustics to characterize two ice interfaces at different normal stress. Sam used bench top test of carbon mineralization while looking at the effect of stress and pH. They were a great crew!

During this summer we also had a visitor from New Zealand, Lucy, who brought with her some samples from Dave Prior's lab. Lucy was here to learn about attenuation and Hatsuki's new apparatus. We decided to hold a mini-workshop about Q and invited folks from nearby U.Penn.

I can't remember why it was that Travis brought his dewar, but I realized that between his, Lucy's and ours (which Kris was loading up and getting ready to take to the UK), we had an outright gaggle of dewars.