News release archives
Geology Grad Students Lead Kids on an Educational Hike (June 2009)
06/03/2009 - Three graduate students from Caltech's Tectonics Observatory recently led a class of 40 sixth graders from Burbank Elementary School on a geology field trip through Eaton Canyon. The graduate students, Alan Chapman, Janet Harvey, and Steve Kidder, each led a third of the class on an exploration of the geological features of the canyon, teaching them about rocks and their origins, faults of different scales, why some boulders are rounded and others angular, and the difference between gabbro and granite.
As the groups hiked along, they whacked their way through bushes, threw rocks into streams, and made several stream crossings. Each of the students also had a chance to hammer on rocks to reveal fresh surfaces—hidden garnet was the students' favorite discovery. Finally, the entire class met together at a waterfall for lunch. One of the sixth graders said it was "the best field trip ever," and a chaperone mother pointed out, "Hiking isn't as interesting without a geologist along!"
Caltech Grad Students and Professor Participate in Local Public Middle School's Science and Math Fair
02/25/2009 - Three graduate students and a professor from Caltech's Tectonics Observatory presented hands-on activities in Earth science at Sierra Madre Middle School's Science and Math Fair on February 18. About 70 of the school's sixth graders, along with their families, attended the event, at which the sixth graders presented posters of their science and math projects.
Graduate student Ravi Kanda used styrofoam and playdough models of earthquake faults to demonstrate how mountains are built. After moving the blocks along the faults, the students compared the resulting deformation of the playdough to actual photographs of different types of mountains and stream offsets from California and Nevada.
Using an earthquake machine (a spring-slider model), graduate student Ozgun Konca demonstrated how plate motions on the earth cause earthquakes. The students tested the intensity of an earthquake by putting lego buildings on one plate to see whether they would topple over, and a few students stayed on to complete a triangulation exercise using actual seismograms to locate the epicenter of an earthquake that occurred in California.
Sparking student interest in plate tectonics by showing the highly detailed USGS map "This Dynamic Earth," graduate student Michelle Selvans asked students to find patterns, such as mid-ocean ridges and earthquake and volcano locations. The students then examined different types of plate motions and identified which might form these different types of features.
Caltech Scientists Lead Deep-Sea Discovery Voyage
02/04/2009 - Scientists from Caltech and an international team of collaborators have returned from a month-long deep-sea voyage to a marine reserve near Tasmania, Australia, that not only netted coral-reef samples likely to provide insight into the impact of climate change on the world's oceans, but also brought to light at least three never-before-seen species of sea life.
"It was truly one of those transcendent moments," says Caltech's Jess Adkins of the descents made by the remotely operated submersible Jason. Adkins was the cruise's lead scientist and is an associate professor of geochemistry and global environmental science at Caltech. "We were flying—literally flying—over these deep-sea structures that look like English gardens, but are actually filled with all of these carnivorous, Seuss-like creatures that no one else has ever seen."
Potential for Large Earthquake Off the Coast of Sumatra Remains Large, Says Caltech-Led Team of Scientists
12/03/2008 - The subduction zone that brought us the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tsunami is ripe for yet another large event, despite a sequence of quakes that occurred in the Mentawai Islands area in 2007, according to a group of earthquake researchers led by scientists from the Tectonics Observatory at Caltech. "From what we saw," says geologist Jean-Philippe Avouac, director of the Tectonics Observatory and one of the paper's lead authors, "we can say with some confidence that we're probably not done with large earthquakes in Sumatra." Their findings were published in a letter in the December 4 issue of the journal Nature.
Caltech Geobiologists Discover Unique "Magnetic Death Star" Fossil
10/21/2008 - An international team of scientists has discovered microscopic, magnetic fossils resembling spears and spindles, unlike anything previously seen, among sediment layers deposited during an ancient global-warming event along the Atlantic coastal plain of the United States. The researchers, led by geobiologists from Caltech and McGill University, describe the findings in a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
