The Eclipse

Even though I was not prepared at all for the eclipse, my coworkers did not let me down. Lamont was a flurry of activity on the day of the big eclipse. All gathered conveniently right outside the lab.

All manner of viewing devices were fabricated by my creative co-workers.

The rock mechanics kids even joined in on the fun (though mine grew weary of all the "fun" after about 20 minutes..."mom, this eclipse is BORING").

First Q experiments

This little picture may not seem like much. But it's huge! This was our first ever attempt at imposing a sinusoidal load on top of a background load, at various frequencies (white curve). A new set up was used such that a stationary base was beneath sample (so that it can't slide). The resulting purple curve was the displacement of the sample. In this case we just used teflon, but it shows that all the components for controlling and measuring low amplitude cyclic loads are there. I'm very very excited about this.