7/30/2010
Applied Geology Laboratory, Energy and Environmental Research Center, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND.

After a long journey, I arrived at the Applied Geology Laboratory at the EERC. All the way in North Dakota!
I met Blaise Mibeck, who is a solid-state physicist, a physicist who studies matter*. The other people in his group are geologists. They work well together to solve many energy and environmental problems. They discover new ways to drill for oil and to store air pollution like CO2 , SO2 and H2S underground.
The group in this particular lab measures rocks using different methods. Matter has properties like color, volume, mass, smell.... the list of properties is very long. It is part of a scientists' job to measure these properties so that when an experiment is done, you can tell what has changed. It is also important to measure these properties so that engineers can make good decisions.
On my visit, I used equipment to measure the following:
-porosity
-strength
-chemical composition of a rock sample
Blaise and his friends showed me the different samples they are studying. I got to keep some of the rock sample that I studied and the data I collected.
I will post more about my visit soon. :)
Comments (1)
Madame Curious said
at 2:59 pm on Nov 12, 2010
Hi Blaise, Thanks for letting Madame Curious visit. We also loved the stuff that she brought back. We shared the stuff with the middle school teacher, and she was thrilled. We were kind of wondering why Madame Curous never came back to the site and finished the blog about her trip. We wanted to know what else she did. Perhaps she got busy or had to fly out to her next location. Anyway, we were also wondering, when can we come visit?
You don't have permission to comment on this page.