News

Wat On Earth: August 2004 (PDF)

Nancy Collins, 4B English Communications Associate, on her work term with University of Waterloo Co-operative Education and Career Services

Amy Sittler, Co-op Student,
Elmira District Secondary School

The diamond

The diamond is a crystalline form of carbon, and natural diamond is the hardest known mineral there is. The most common form is the octahedron, but other forms are cubes and irregular masses. 

Paul Karrow, Quaternary Sciences Institute

Glaciers make great dams. Ice is impermeable. Yes, it may crack, or dissolve in water, but if it's thick enough (more than about 50m) it flows under its own weight and tends to fill cavities (we might say "self-healing" or "self-sealing). 

Alan V. Morgan

Not so very far from the University of Waterloo are a number of large stone quarries working the dolostones at the top of the Niagara escarpment near Dundas, Ontario. Our older magazine "WAT ON EARTH" described a visit to this quarry a number of years ago (Wat On Earth, volume 14, number 2, 2001).

Alan V. Morgan

Melissa Battler

Earth and Space is part of the new Ontario Curriculum through grade 12. Melissa got the Earth Sciences bug while she was at high school in Cambridge. Her Earth sciences teacher, Stan Jones created the spark of interest and she has found her career interest. Melissa wishes to work on Mars exploration projects. When she graduated from the University of Waterloo in Spring 2004 she will continue an interest which has given her opportunities even as an undergraduate.

Jennifer Nafziger, 2B Geological Engineering

The great waves of the Pacific crash only a few meters below me as I write. I am sitting on the Bolsa Chica State beach in southern California, somehow escaping the great white Canadian winter. I watch the black dots marking sandpipers and surfers with a sense of disbelief: how in the world did I end up here? I hope this essay will help answer that question, both for the reader and for myself.

Waterloo, Ont. -- Peter Russell, curator at the University of Waterloo's Department of Earth Sciences, has been chosen as the 2004 recipient of the prestigious E.R.W.Neale Medal.

The esteemed medal is awarded by the Geological Association of Canada (GAC) to an individual for sustained outstanding efforts in sharing earth science with Canadians. The medal has been awarded annually since 1995.

Following a two-year plus period of building, the Department of Earth Sciences (or most of it) moved into the CEIT (Centre for Environment, Innovation and Technology) Building in September of 2003. However, a number of changes took place over the following six months, including a multitude of wall placements and the installation of museum specimens, and the building was formally opened on February 27, 2004.