Each day passes like a dream. I wake up, get immediately to work and before I know it, it’s 9pm: time for some dinner and a little TV with my roommate/fearless leader Katie. This week has been filled with interviews, meetings, music and lots of computer work.
On Tuesday we had two interviews. The first was with James Tyburczy the current director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. He has been a tremendous ally to us, helping us to connect to all the scientists at the university. His particular field of study is in mineral physics. He studies the physical and chemical properties of minerals, melts, and rocks or as I like to call it HOT LAVA!
The second interview was with Edmund Stump. He is a professor and associate director at the school, but he is better known for his work on the Transantarctic Mountains. This guy is a real life Indiana Jones. He travels to remote places to study the way mountains were formed. The way he does that is by climbing to the top of the mountain and then collecting rock samples on the way down and analyzing their chemical makeup. But we are not talking about little wimpy mountains here. We are talking about big, scary, cold, icy mountains in Antarctica. He literally wrote the book on Transantarctic Mountains and you can purchase it on Amazon for just $21.35.
Here is what the Transantarctic Mountains look like. They are much larger than they appear in this picture with a length of about 3,500KM.
And here is a picture of how the mountaineers get around down there.
Something that has been present in all of our interviews is the topic of interdisciplinary work. Apparently it is not common in the field of science to have so many different kinds of scientists working together. It is a strong and somewhat novel belief of the School that this interdisciplinary collaboration will lead to new discoveries and more answers… or more questions. That is something that CCdd believes strongly in as well. I am so excited about the potential in this relationship between Arts and Science.
After a long day of sitting, listening and writing, I like to go for a little jog in the neighborhoods that surround the school. I was surprised by all of the cool art that lives in people’s yards and the public streets here.
This person has a dead tree in their yard, which they ornamented with an old bicycle covered in Christmas lights. At night it looks like it is floating in the sky ET style.
People really love to ride bikes here because it is so flat and parking is mostly illegal. Re-purposed bikes make it into a lot of the art in this town.
Another thing I enjoy during my jogs is saying hello to all the cats. Wild cats are all over Tempe. Like this gang right here:
And the sunsets here are incredible, especially when they silhouette a cool art piece made of re-purposed road signs.
