If you ever get a chance to see a total solar eclipse, do it. Growing up in a family of amateur astronomers, I have many memories of club meetings where members shared pictures and stories of various eclipses they traveled to see around the world. Almost everyone would go to one, get bit by the […]
Category: Science
Cycling in the Carolinas and a Visit to PARI
Mike and I joined the Waterloo Cycling Club on their annual pilgrimage to South Carolina for a week of training camp. I was a bit of a hanger-on: the training camp is primarily meant to get the race team into shape for the season, although families do come out. In other years, there are a […]
Rainy Days, the Monsoon and Taiwan
The word ‘monsoon’ may conujure up images of warm tropical rains, however the term monsoon refers to a seasonal wind that reverses direction during the year. The summer monsoon is typically a rainy season, whereas the the winter monsoon is typically dry. This is because during the summer, the Asian landmass gets heated by the […]
Rain, wind and waves… Typhoons!
Typhoons are the the Northwestern Pacific’s equivalent to the hurricanes that occur in the Northeastern Pacific and Atlantic. They are formed when a number of factors (including a warm ocean and an existing weather disturbance) come together. When a typhoon makes landfall, it can bring high winds, torrential rain, huge waves and flooding. Heavy rains […]
A neat post about groundwater
Ever wonder about groundwater? Here’s a neat post with all the basics!
Lessons Learned from My Master’s, Part 3: Writing
When I started my master’s degree I had envisioned 3 experiments, each taking up a chapter. My plan was to write up the results of the first experiment while performing the second and so on until I had the bulk of my thesis written. It seemed easy, but it did not turn out that way! […]
Manuscript Accepted!
I am pleased to announce that Chapter 2 of my master’s thesis has been accepted for publication in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. It will be published in a special issue dedicated to the application of hydrogen isotopes as environmental recorders sometime soon! The title of the paper is Variable δD Values Among Major Biochemicals in […]
Lessons Learned from My Master’s, Part 2: Good Weekly Habits
Last installment, I touched on 3 ways to improve data organization. Today’s theme is “good weekly habits”. I always found my weeks filled up quickly in graduate school. There were always experiments to set up and execute, results to analyze, and don’t forget your coursework! However, there are a few things you can do that […]
Lessons Learned from My Master’s, Part 1: Organizing Big Research Projects
One of the big reasons I wanted to complete a Master’s program rather than embarking on a Ph.D. immediately after my undergraduate studies was to get a handle on managing big projects. Everything in an undergraduate program is necessarily limited in scope to either one or two terms, and you don’t have to be particularly […]
Geological/Scientific Drawing
I saw these links posted on Reddit (/r/geology), and wanted to post them here for future reference. Here are some great resources for geological and other science illustration: Geologic Map Patterns for Canvas (R), Illustrator (R) and Freehand (R) , from Andreas Plesch and the USGS Integration and Application Network (IAN) symbol library, which contains […]