Second field day in SW Utah Jurassic: Wooster geologists begin their projects

During another beautiful day in southwestern Utah, Team Utah 2022 began to collect field data and specimens. We started in Manganese Wash with Lucie’s project, which involves the stratigraphy and paleoenvironments associated with the transition from the lower Co-Op Creek … Continue reading
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Wooster Geologists return to southwestern Utah

Washington, Utah — In March 2020 a team of Wooster Geologists was in beautiful southwestern Utah sampling, measuring and analyzing rocks and fossils from the Middle Jurassic Carmel Formation north of St. George. The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to end … Continue reading
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Alien Suns Reversing in Exoplanet Skies

Not only can suns stand still in the sky, from some exoplanets their motion can appear to reverse! Wooster physics-math double majors Xinchen (Ariel) Xie ’21 and Hwan (Michelle) Bae ’19 and I just published an article elucidating these apparent solar reversals. … Continue reading
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Black Hole Above the Fold

While grocery shopping, I normally just glance at the newspapers in the newsstand. However, this morning, I was excited to see “above the fold” of the Wall Street Journal a large reproduction of the first image of the supermassive black hole … Continue reading
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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Encrusted strophomenid brachiopods from the Upper Ordovician of northern Kentucky (and the old concave-up or concave-down controversy)

After the delightful Joint North-Central and Southeastern Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Cincinnati this month, some of the Wooster Geologists visited a fossiliferous exposure of the Bellevue Formation (Upper Ordovician, Katian) along the Bullitsville Road in … Continue reading
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Slide Rule Examples

Slide rules were widely used in engineering, science, and mathematics until the early 1970s, including during the Gemini and Apollo space programs. Although rendered largely obsolete by the advent of inexpensive electronic calculators, their descendants continue to have specialized applications, such … Continue reading
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Wooster geologists at the Joint North-Central and Southeastern Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Cincinnati

Cincinnati, Ohio —  This week Professor Wiles, Nick Wiesenberg and I attended the 2022 Joint North-Central and Southeastern meeting of the Geological Society of America in Cincinnati, about a three-hour drive south of Wooster. It was quite satisfying to attend … Continue reading
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Slide Rules

Slide rules were the analog computers that ruled science and engineering for 400 years. Their brilliant innovation was using logarithms to convert multiplication and division to addition and subtraction, [latex display=”true”]\log xy = \log x + \log y [/latex] and … Continue reading
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Unearthing the effects of European-American settlement on a northeast Ohio kettle lake through diatom stratigraphy — The Independent Study project of Justine Paul A. Berina (’22)

Editor’s Note: Independent Study (IS) at The College of Wooster is a three-course series required of every student before graduation. Earth Sciences students typically begin in the second semester of their junior years with project identification, literature review, and a … Continue reading
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Diffraction Limited

Yesterday, Webb optical telescope element manager Lee Feinberg said “We made the right telescope” while reporting that its focus has reached the diffraction limit of 70 milliarcseconds. (For comparison, Earth’s moon subtends 31 arcminutes or about 1/2°.) Unlike the Hubble … Continue reading
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