Esha+Geopaths+NCSU

At this open house event, we were split into groups and received presentations from 3 different experts in different fields, relating to geopaths.

First we worked with Dr. Jay Levine and his colleagues and studied mussels. First we were able to examine bloodworms under a microscope and studied them the way people many years ago would: by sketching what you saw. In our sketch, we included important information like the date the data was taken and the temperature of the water. Also we saw the cilia that the bloodworms used to transport food to its mouths. We also played a game where we had to sort mussel shells and determine their species, it was very challenging! We had to use size and the rays or line markings on the mussels to determine it.

Then we worked with Dr. Helena Mitsova and her team. We were able to have a hands on demonstration of how her landscaping technology worked. It was cool because you could think of many practical applications for the technology. For example, we were able to design a park with red maple trees, ponds, and hills using a grid of sand! I enjoyed designing our own park and trying to making a pond as big as possible using dams and considering the direction of runoff.

Lastly, we got to play around with Google Earth with the help of Dr. Karl Wegmann who is a geologist that studies landslides. We specifically studied the Oso landslide in Oregon, to which I got to feel special when I knew a fact that others did not. We learned that other than oceans, hill slopes are most commonly found on earth. Before the presentation, we were told to think about many questions. The questions were things like: how big is the oso landslide? How many dumptrucks would it take to haul away the debris? How often do landslides occur in this valley? At the closing of the presentation, we learned that it would require 904,000 dumptrucks each holding 10 cubic yards of material. Also, using radiocarbon dating, we learned that landslides would occur every 150-500 years.