Earth Sciences and Science Education

The geochemistry and hydrogeology laboratory houses a Rame Hart Goniometer, an SRI Gassless Educational Gas Chromatograph and an Orion 210A Portable pH/ISE meter. Faculty and students make regular use of a Hach CEL/850 Environmental Water Quality Lab kit, including a digital titrator and a colorimeter. The lab also has a Hach 2100P Portable Turbidimeter.

The lab is used for research, class demonstrations and labs in classes such as GES 350: Environmental Geochemistry and GES 460: Applied Environmental Methods.

The Rock Prep Lab is furnished with all equipment necessary for rock and mineral sample handling for faculty and student research, and for teaching of the associated techniques for mineral separates analysis, petrography, and SEM analyses.  The lab features a 24" slab saw, a trim saw, and a precision saw, and several polishing options including an automatic polisher, two polishing wheels (10" and 18"), and a vibratory polisher.  The lab has an integrated jaw crusher and disk mill for sample reduction, a sandbox for sample reorientation and a model L-1 magnetic separator.  For thin-sectioning, the lab houses a thin-sectioning machine, glass polishing plates, and an epoxy station.  On hand is a research-grade petrographic microscope and two hand-specimen microscopes. 

For information e-mail Gary S. Solar.

This is an interdisciplinary lab for geology and chemistry that includes twenty-four student stations each with a dedicated petrographic microscope equipped with an integrated digital camera.  Twelve stereo microscopes with blackfield capabilities are also available.  For teaching and research there are three research-grade versions of these microscopes, each equipped with dedicated high-definition digital cameras.  The petrographic microscopes are compound polarizing microscopes that filter and bend light rays to enable examination of minerals and textures in thin slices of rock (thin sections) at magnifications ranging from 40x to 400x for the student scopes and a combined 7x to 1000x for the teaching scopes.  Six of the student scope cameras are Wi-Fi, part of the ongoing project of equipping the lab with fully for Wi-Fi teaching.

The department maintains mineral, fossil, rock and map collections. Our collection contains over 2,000 maps, 2,000 labeled fossil specimens, 1,500 labeled rock specimens, and 800 labeled mineral specimens.  The department has three dedicated teaching labs in SAMC (57, 106, 115) Rooms 106 and 115 are identical, and feature flexible seating/table configurations, and were designed for map and specimen examination including a digital teaching microscope and five hand-specimen microscopes.  Room 57 is the dedicated "wet" teaching lab and houses a SRI Gassless Educational Gas Chromatograph and an Orion 210A Portable pH/ISE meter.  There is also a Hach CEL/850 Environmental Water Quality Lab Kit, including a digital titrator and a colorimeter.  The lab also has a Hach 2100P Portable Turbidimeter.