Tag: senior research
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From the Tunnel to the Temple
The W&M Geology Department’s spring field trip dashed out of Williamsburg on Saturday for a one-day jaunt from the Tunnel to the Temple. The tunnel is the Blue Ridge Tunnel that Claudius Crozet engineered beneath Rockfish Gap in the 1850s. The temple is the LOTUS (Light Of Truth Universal Shrine) temple that forms the centerpiece…
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Working in a Winter Wonderland: The Gravity of the Situation (Part 2)
Last summer I reported on our field research in the High Plateaus of Utah. Erika Wenrich’s senior thesis project involves a gravity survey aimed at estimating the amount of sediment beneath Fish Lake, a large alpine lake developed in a high-elevation graben. In June we measured gravity at a network of stations around Fish Lake,…
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Glimpses of the Past: The Rockfish Conglomerate
My family has a tradition of going camping about once per semester. Back in the spring of 2011, as the Appalachians were beginning to green up, we headed west to Rockfish, Virginia for a weekend camping trip to my Uncle Joe’s farm. Joe’s farm is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and…
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Summer Research: Introducing the Wayne WonderMonkeys
As I noted in my last post our summer geologic field research took us to the Beehive State. Our work is primarily focused on Wayne County in the south-central part of Utah. Created in 1892, Wayne County forms an expansive rectangular block of nearly 2,500 square miles. The county is sparsely populated with about 2,700…
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Senior Moments
The spring semester is rushing towards its conclusion. Classes have ended, final exams are underway, and graduation is just over a week away. The Geology Department’s class of 2012 is an accomplished and talented group. As I’ve noted before, all geology majors complete a year-long, independent senior thesis—this project is part of what makes the…