Earth Sciences Commons^™

Connecting Aerial Gamma Ray Surveys And Geochemical Data, Kara Marsac, Pamela Burnley, Elisabeth Hausrath, Russell Malchow, Daniel Haber

NSTec UNLV Symposium

• Radiation in the Environment
• Aerial Gamma Ray Surveys
• Radiation and Geology
• Collecting Existing Geochemical Data
• Rock Unit Geochemistry
• Model Creation and Comparison

Predictive Modeling Of Radiological Background Using Geochemistry, Daniel Haber, Pamela C. Burnley, Kara Marsac, Russell Malchow, Elisabeth Hausrath, Christopher Adcock

NSTec UNLV Symposium

• Introduction & Background
• Methods
• Models
• Results and Discussion
• Future Work

Correlation Between Grain Dislocation Density And Orientation For Naturally Deformed Mantle Xenolith From Jagersfontein Mine, Quinton Guerrero, Quinlan Smith

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Determining the reaction of poly-crystalline structures to induced stress is an extremely difficult problem in contemporary engineering and geology. The main challenge lies in the inhomogeneity of the grains inside of the poly-crystalline structures. To predict the response of a certain polycrystalline structure to a specific stress, you must resort to one of two views on grain interaction, an orientation or propagation based model. For every material there may be certain correlations between the prediction model used and the actual deformation that occurred. Our work centers around describing the correlation of these prediction models with a sample of naturally deformed …

Serpentinite Weathering And Implications For Mars, Valerie Tu, Julie Baumeister, Rodney Metcalf, A. Olsen, Elisabeth Hausrath

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

In the search for life on Mars near-surface soil environments may be important habitats for life accessible to future missions. Serpentinite rocks have been documented on Mars, as well as other clay minerals including smectite and kaolinites. Previous studies of soils formed on serpentinites on Earth have documented the formation of extensive clays. Serpentinites are additionally of interest as habitats for life such as methanogens. Here we examine weathering of serpentinites from bedrock to soil surface, as a potential route for the formation of clay minerals on Mars from abundant ultramafic minerals. We additionally test for the presence of Fe-oxidizing …

Great Basin Center For Geothermal Energy, Wendy Calvin

Nevada Renewable Energy Consortium Meeting

The second annual Nevada Renewable Energy Consortium meeting took place at UNLV on August 20. The meeting focused on the current three NVREC program areas: Solar, Biomass and Geothermal. Presentations were made by participating entities and a poster session followed.

A Study Of Nife(X)Cr(2-X)O4 By Laser Micro-Raman Spectroscopy, Lucas Wilson, Markus Vasquez, John Farley, Allen L. Johnson, Brian D. Hosterman

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Standards of spinels, composed of two metals and oxygen with the formula AB2O4, are being created with known composition to identify spinels in samples of unknown composition by comparison with the spectra obtained from the standards. Laser micro-Raman spectroscopy allows the identification of chemical species based on their unique vibrational modes. The degree to which spinels of varying composition can be identified will be determined. This will aid in the study of the corrosion of steel by liquid metal. Spinels are a likely component of the oxide layer. Understanding the composition of the products of corrosion leads to an understanding …

Magnetic Ordering Phase Transitions Of Gd2sn2o7, Gordon Tam, Andrew Cornelius, Daniel Antonio

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Pyrochlores with magnetic rare earth ions are a topic of interest due to unusual results brought about by their high degree of geometrical frustration. The lattice structure prevents the magnetic spin interactions from finding a single minimum energy state, which leads to a nonzero residual entropy[1]. By analyzing the heat capacity at low temperatures, the type of magnetic interaction can be determined and the temperatures at which long-range magnetic ordering and magnetic field induced splitting of energy states occur.