I think I may have a new favourite rock type
This week I am at a Metamorphic Field Symposium, held in south western Sweden. This started Thursday morning. We spent all day yesterday in te field, and ten listened to interesting presentations on te topic into the night. Today was also spent in the field, and, as soon as the others have finished dinner (I ate my dinner in the field at a sensible hour, of course, rather than waiting till 19:30 to begin eating) we will spend the evening listening to more presentations.
All of the outcrops and talks have been interesting (of course; this is a metamorphic gathering), but the hight so far has been the kyanite rich ecologite we saw today. Normal eclogites are rich in pyroxene and garnet, and so are usually very green wit red spots. Kyanite, on te other hand, is a blue mineral. The outcrop we saw today has veins full of kyanite doted with garnet. In other words, places where the rock is blue wit dark red spots in it. Beautiful! I did, of course, take lots of photos, and will share after I get home and have a chance to upload them to a computer (I didn't bring one with me).
On my way to the symposium I stayed the night with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lindalinsefors's parents in Lund, since the meeting point was at the University in Lund at 07:30 in the morning. It was nice to see them again. They gave me two books--a copy of the swedish version of Anne of Avonlea (Vår van Anne<\i>), which will be an easy read because of how many times I have read the English version, and a copy of Den förtrollade mässingsknoppen<\i>, which I think is a translation of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. This one looks to also be an easy read, but in htis case because it is an easy reading level. I think I read that book when I was a child (and have seen this exact cover art before), but I didn't have a copy, so would only have read it once. It will be interesting to see how much I remember as I read it.
Wednesday afternoon I attended a Nordic Science conference in Luleå. This was a meeting for researchers at northern Universities in Scandaniva to meet potential collaborators. Those of us who wanted to got to do five minute talks telling of research we would like to do, in hopes of finding folk to collaborate with. Mine was the last talk before the first coffee break. I started my talk with "we have heard a lot today about the future and what science can to to make it better. I am going to tell you about the past, and how science can help us understand it better." I then briefly explained about how the composition of garnet is dependant upon temerature and pressure, and that therefore garnets from different locations wind up with different chenical signatures, and therefore it can be possible to determine the source of garnet used in jewlery in archeological artefacts, and how I would love to give this a try.
Much to my surprise I spent the entire coffee break talking to one person after another about this--they kept coming up to me with questions and comments. I barely got a chance to eat the snack I had picked up from the table. A bit later in the day, between two talks, the man sitting behind me, whose name tag identified him as a European Commissioner, told me that he really appreciated my talk because it showed that I have the courage and imagination to be solving problems we don't yet know we have, unlike most of the other speakers, who talked of innoviation, yet proposed nothing new.
Shortly thereafter I left that conference to head to the airport, because life really is full on these days.
The day before that confrence I made myself a new pair of wool trousers, because I didn't have anything suitable to wear into the field. Sadly, it was necessary to use a sewing machine, since I started them barely 28 hours before I needed them. Happily, all those years of hand sewing meant that it went smoothly.
All of the outcrops and talks have been interesting (of course; this is a metamorphic gathering), but the hight so far has been the kyanite rich ecologite we saw today. Normal eclogites are rich in pyroxene and garnet, and so are usually very green wit red spots. Kyanite, on te other hand, is a blue mineral. The outcrop we saw today has veins full of kyanite doted with garnet. In other words, places where the rock is blue wit dark red spots in it. Beautiful! I did, of course, take lots of photos, and will share after I get home and have a chance to upload them to a computer (I didn't bring one with me).
On my way to the symposium I stayed the night with
lindalinsefors's parents in Lund, since the meeting point was at the University in Lund at 07:30 in the morning. It was nice to see them again. They gave me two books--a copy of the swedish version of Anne of Avonlea (Vår van Anne<\i>), which will be an easy read because of how many times I have read the English version, and a copy of Den förtrollade mässingsknoppen<\i>, which I think is a translation of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. This one looks to also be an easy read, but in htis case because it is an easy reading level. I think I read that book when I was a child (and have seen this exact cover art before), but I didn't have a copy, so would only have read it once. It will be interesting to see how much I remember as I read it.Wednesday afternoon I attended a Nordic Science conference in Luleå. This was a meeting for researchers at northern Universities in Scandaniva to meet potential collaborators. Those of us who wanted to got to do five minute talks telling of research we would like to do, in hopes of finding folk to collaborate with. Mine was the last talk before the first coffee break. I started my talk with "we have heard a lot today about the future and what science can to to make it better. I am going to tell you about the past, and how science can help us understand it better." I then briefly explained about how the composition of garnet is dependant upon temerature and pressure, and that therefore garnets from different locations wind up with different chenical signatures, and therefore it can be possible to determine the source of garnet used in jewlery in archeological artefacts, and how I would love to give this a try.
Much to my surprise I spent the entire coffee break talking to one person after another about this--they kept coming up to me with questions and comments. I barely got a chance to eat the snack I had picked up from the table. A bit later in the day, between two talks, the man sitting behind me, whose name tag identified him as a European Commissioner, told me that he really appreciated my talk because it showed that I have the courage and imagination to be solving problems we don't yet know we have, unlike most of the other speakers, who talked of innoviation, yet proposed nothing new.
Shortly thereafter I left that conference to head to the airport, because life really is full on these days.
The day before that confrence I made myself a new pair of wool trousers, because I didn't have anything suitable to wear into the field. Sadly, it was necessary to use a sewing machine, since I started them barely 28 hours before I needed them. Happily, all those years of hand sewing meant that it went smoothly.