@kristinadunkel
Associate professor in petrology. Research, teaching, and electron microscopy at The Njord Centre and the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo. Interested in mineral reactions, deformation, and microstructures.
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Many of us have used Oreo cookies as analogues when explaining plate tectonics, but all this time, "Geo" cookies existed! Who knew?!? What a wasted opportunity. 😁
#GeoEducation
This fold in chlorite was not produced by tectonic processes, but by the hands of an iron-age craftsman shaping clay into pottery. Interesting perspective for a geologist like me! I'm enjoying my foray into #archeology. :)
#FridayFold
It's been a while, but I just found this "spherulitite" thinsection from the Oslo rift area in our teaching collection and thought that's my sign to contribute to #ThinsectionThursday again! 😃
Great fun to see #ElectronMicroscopy images acquired in the Goldschmidt laboratory at @uio.no in petri dishes as part of an art installation!
Artist Ann Edvartsen Hay worked on mineral extraction and its effects on nature and communities:
bodiesofextraction.com
#ArtAndScience
Yes, I think you probably recognize that sort of rock.
A colleague asked for my help in polishing a thin section on short notice. I am quite busy, but who could say no to such a beautiful sample? 🤩
#ThinsectionThursday
Fantastic #FieldworkFriday with my petrology students today! We are lucky to have so much exiting geology here around Oslo. Today's focus: intrusive relationships between basalt and syenite, volcaniclastics, and a tiny bit of contact metamorphism.
Look at those interference colour fringes 🌈 in calcite! By focusing through the grain I can count eight orders.
#ThinsectionThursday #Microscopy
A serpentinite mesh texture for #ThinsectionThursday. Or is it a piece of modern art? 🖌️
Note how there are several generations of serpentine, among them a clear one that filled the first fractures, and a dark one (full of magnetite) that replaced the rest of the olivine.
Maybe not this one, but I'm sure others could...
I just pasted this photo into a powerpoint, and the #AI-generated AIt Text is "A person drawing a fish on a rock". 😂 Pretty accurate description!
#geology
I scanned it with the Zeiss Axioscan thinsections scanner. At the lowest resolution, that took just a few minutes.
I have used this garnet mica schist for teaching for years, but never noticed how beautifully the interference colours highlight the foliation (and the varying thickness of the thinsection). Having a scan of the whole section really changes one's perspective.
#ThinsectionThursday
I don't often work with igneous rocks, but they do have cool microstructures, too!
Skeletal Fe-Ti-oxide grains with lots of exsolution lamellae. (Width of image is ca 40 µm.)
#ThinsectionThursday
Hello World, I am back and excited to (re-)connect with you!
And we are just in time to start our 24 easy #KitchenOceanography experiments on oceanic processes, all using only household items, for a fun way to explore ocean physics. Find all of them here: mirjamglessmer.com/24daysofkitc...
Some beautiful interference colours for this week's #ThinsectionThursday. :)
Hunebed D50, a neolithic burial structure in a grassy field surrounded by trees, near the Dutch town of Noord-Sleen. An inner ring of half buried large rocks is covered by horizontal flat rocks. This structure is surrounded by a second ring of half-buried rocks. Initially these rocks would have been covered by a mound of soil. Many hunebedden were built east-west with the entrance facing south.
Hunebed D50, the same one as the previous picture, within the outer ring of half buried rocks. We see five half-buried rocks in the foreground, all covered by flat horizontal rocks that are also supported by more half-buried rocks in the back, out of view. Behind these rocks are trees.
Today: geology meets archaeology! This is what we call a "hunebed" in Dutch: a neolithic burial structure built by people of the Funnelbeaker culture between ~3400-3000 BC. Many are found across the northern Netherlands and parts of Germany and Denmark. But what are they made of?
Sure! A carbonated serpentinite from Feragen, Norway.
We published an overview of the many types of carbonation in that area a while ago: njg.geologi.no/publications...
I still do not entirely understand these rocks, but at some point I had put so much work into this that it had to be published. :D
For more details, see my old @eurogeosciences.bsky.social blog entry: blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2020/...
For my first #ThinsectionThursday under the blue sky, one of my favourite micrographs: A serpentine pseudomorph after carbonate?
The mineral with the grey interference colours is serpentine which apparently preserves the cleavage of a pre-existing carbonate.
Banner advertising session GMPV3.2 at EGU25 general assembly titled: How deformation and metamorphism interact: insights into thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical feedbacks in nature and experiments The conference will be in Vienna, Austria and online between 27 April and 2 May 2025.
Are you interested in how deformation and metamorphism interact? Consider submitting an abstract to our session at #EGU25 ⚒️🧪
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Deadline to apply for travel support is om the 2nd of december!
I usually prefer working with thinsections, but sometimes 3D samples are fun as well!
Here some gypsum growing in black shale from Oslo.
Field of view ca 10 µm.
#electronmicroscopy
