Hello and welcome to Treasure Hunting! My name is Ali Knaak.
I am a graduate student working and playing in Golden, Colorado. This blog is a
project for my Advanced Science Communication class. The goal is to mix some
science with good stories, communication, and discussion to hopefully produce
an interesting, engaging blog.
Do you remember as a kid going outside and exploring the
backyard? When I was a kid I would explore everything from the nearby creek to
dirt piles left from construction. My mom tells me how I would spend hours
outside collecting “gems” from the landscaping rocks and bring a big pile
inside to keep. (Yep, I had a rock polisher.) I still have some of the rocks I
picked up as a child and I still have a yearning to explore. It’s the
excitement of a new discovery and finding an answer to a question. I think
everyone still has a little kid in them wanting to go discover something. We
are hunting for treasure.
Calvin & Hobbes say it best. Source: http://roy-g-bivblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/calvin-and-hobbes.html |
This blog is about treasure hunting – both as an idea and a
practice. I think treasure hunting sums up a lot of what we are trying to do in
the world. There’s the philosophical idea that everyone is hunting for some
treasure but there is also the relentless search for new caches of diamonds,
metals, oil, etc. One way that these treasures are found is geophysics.
Geophysics uses physical properties of the earth and/or the target to locate and
characterize the target and area. An everyday example of geophysics is taking a
metal detector out to the beach to find lost rings and watches. Geophysics
is connected to many different, relevant areas like gas, fracking, locating
unexploded bombs, and finding water such to name a few. My hope is to make these
connections more apparent because it will help me understand the goals of my graduate school research in the context of the world and hopefully help you understand how
you affect this area of science and how it affects you. I will be exploring these things through this blog. So join me on this journey. Check back in for another post sometime this week.
For day let's just remember: There's Treasure Everywhere!