Department of Geology - Department - Facilities

FACILITIES

Give me my ax and a place to swing it, and I will change the world. Paul Bunyan (apocryphal)

THOMPSON HALL

The Department of Geology occupies Thompson Hall, perhaps the most graceful building on campus, and among the most suitable for a mixture of classrooms, laboratories, and offices. Faculty have individual offices, mostly with convenient research spaces nearby, and graduate students share spacious offices with a non-cubicular atmospheres. Department computer labs, a small library, and the Mudge Room (a nicely appointed lounge, seminar room, and brown-bag lunchroom) are open to geology majors as well as grad students and faculty.

LABORATORY FACILITIES

General geology teaching laboratory.

Thompson Hall has over 20 rooms designated as laboratory spaces, ranging from spacious teaching labs to individual research labs, with computer labs and instrument labs in between. Most of these spaces are supervised by individual faculty members, and used primarily by them and their students. Several, such as the computer labs, are for all who need them. These spaces and the equipment they contain serve about half the research needs of the department, with the rest elsewhere on campus or at collaborative institutions. Whether a student's needs are within or outside Thompson Hall, the department does its best to meet them.

Geology department computer lab.

Although nearly every room in the department has at least one computer, one laboratory is specifically designated for computer use, with several advanced workstations and industry software, it is used for 3-D seismic exercises as well as lab exercises in petrology and other advanced courses. It has a keypad lock so majors and graduate students may use it at odd hours. The department also has scanners and a 44" plotter for preparing posters for presentation. Thompson Hall is fully wireless, including both offices and classrooms.

Vaterite, a highly unstable polymorph of calcium carbonate, prepared in the geochem lab.

Research preparation labs are critical for faculty and students in geochemical, paleobiological, and other geological fields. Thompson Hall has three geochemical labs with fume hoods and is planning a new clean lab. We also have labs for cutting and crushing rock, sectioning and polishing, and other routine sample preparation. We can do simple chemistry and atomic absorption spectrophotometry on site, but typically take our prepared samples to specialized labs for analyses.

PORTABLE EQUIPMENT

In addition to the usual hand-held compasses and GPS devices for basic field geology, our geophysicists have acquired a respectable suite of instruments for our course in field geophysics. This includes a Topcon GTS-229 laser total station, a proton precession magnetometer, a ground-penetrating radar system with antennae for two different depth ranges, a Worden gravimeter, an electromagnetic sensor, and a seismic reflection/refraction system. These instruments can also be used for undergraduate and graduate thesis research

ON-CAMPUS RESEARCH FACILITIES

KSU NUCLEAR REACTOR FACILITY
Kansas State University is one of a very few campuses to house a research nuclear reactor. This is a TRIGA Mark II pulsing reactor, capable of a steady-state output of 250 kW or short-duration (35 ms) pulses of 250 MW. Although the reactor serves several functions, geological research is primarily conducted through its adjoining (and recently upgraded) C. C. Tate Neutron Activation Analysis Laboratory.

Both faculty and graduate students conduct research in this facility, ranging from provenance studies of sedimentary terranes to studies on esoteric igneous rocks to analyses of archaeological artifacts. The particular sensitivity of neutron activation to rare earths and trace elements makes it a tool of choice in many varieties of investigations.

STABLE ISOTOPE MASS SPECTROMETRY LABORATORY

This facility is housed in the Division of Biology. Its analytical capabilities in determining isotopic and elemental ratios in O, C, N, and H are of considerable value to geochemical and paleobiological investigations, especially in such areas as the determination of paleotemperatures and paleosalinities of ancient environments from fossil shells and sedimentary cements. There are also potential applications in volcanology, groundwater chemistry, archaeology, and many other fields of interest to faculty and students in geology.

INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA OPTICAL EMISSION SPECTROPHOTOMETER (ICP-OES)

This facility is housed in the Department of Agronomy and is supervised by Dr. Gary Pierzynski. It is capable of determining the concentration of many elements in solutions to levels of parts per million. Its obvious applications in groundwater chemistry make this a significant instrument for research projects in geology.

X-RAY DIFFRACTION FACILITIES

K-State has two active x-ray diffraction laboratories, one in the Department of Agronomy, and the other in the Department of Chemistry. This technique is used to measure the lattice spacing in crystalline structures, and is especially useful when dealing with impurities in minerals, such as magnesium in calcite, or in situations where several minerals of identical chemical composition may be present, as in many sulfide deposits, and in fossil aragonite shells partially replaced by calcite. Many geology faculty and students use x-ray diffraction in their research, including Drs. Chaudhuri, Clark, Cullers, and Oviatt.

SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPE

Pennsylvanian chaetetid, recrystallized and encrusted with dogtooth calcite.

Recent cheilostome bryozoan colony with spherical form resulting from its substrate, a float bladder of sargassum seaweed.

K-State acquired a Hitachi Scanning Electron Microscope in 2000, under a grant submitted by faculty in five departments, including geology. It is administered and housed by the Department of Entomology. This instrument is fully computerized, with its images recorded digitally. Among its more advanced capabilities is that of being able to image uncoated specimens that are not fully dry, under very low vacuum. Of course, it can also image traditional paleontological and geological specimens at respectable magnifications, over 20,000 times under good conditions. The chamber can accommodate large specimens.

The instrument includes an Oxford EDS attachment that can provide semi-quantitative analyses of most elements present at the surface of the sample, and has recently added an Astimex standard mount to improve its ability to measure accurate mineral compositions.

Many geology faculty and students use this instrument in research and teaching, including Drs. Chaudhuri, Clark, and West.