Yesterday I went to this GIS workshop put on by the Southwest Missouri GIS User's Group at a place called "The Library Center" on the SW part of town. There were talks all day long from people in and around Springfield that use GIS on a daily basis and what they specifically use it for. Some of the talks were pretty interesting while others were not but it was cool to see how much GIS is really used. People are doing things with GIS that I had never really thought of.
School is starting to pick up with mid-term exams next week and I'm getting more of an idea of what my thesis is going to be. On Tuesday we had a meeting and demostration on how to operate our new portable x-ray fluorescent spectrometer (x-ray gun!). It's a neat little contraption that tells you the concentration of elements in the soils. I'm going to be using it to identify soil layers with very high Lead and Zinc concentrations which represent the height of the Lead mining industry in the area and help give a timeline for how much sediment has been deposited in the past 100 years. I'll be doing a lot more research than just using the x-ray gun, but I think it's going to be one of the fun parts.
Tonight is ArtWalk again (first Friday!!), although I don't know how much I feel like going.
3 comments:
i'm sure that you can think of many more fun things to do with an xray gun than that. what's artwalk? how's the beer?
On the first Friday of every month the Art galleries around Springfield open their doors and provide free food and wine (not great wine, but wine nevertheless). It's a way for the citizens of the city to feel more cultured and for the galleries to maybe sell a few pieces of art. The best place to go by far is the glass blowing store. Nothing like seeing molten rocks!
The beer is still maturing. Actually, we wanted to try this evening but Derek is out of town and all the beer is in his basement.
i'm with mdw - there has got to be more fun things. however, i don't think it really is an xray gun; you all probably got swindled. i once bought some xray glasses and could not see through....well, let's just say they didn't work.
Post a Comment