Greetings from Sudbury!

Hello Everyone!

Yesterday I worked with the Geiger counter measuring radiation from the rock surfaces. I got to learn how to use a Geiger counter and collected data on the average number of particles released from a certain area of rock over a minute.

Today, I worked determining the magnetic susceptibility of the tock in different outcroppings outside of the Sudbury Impact Crater. We found that the magnetic susceptibility greatly varied within just one rock due to the heterogeneous nature of the rock itself. Different types of rock had different magnetic susceptibilities. There is Breccia, which is a combination of a lot of different rock types in one rock. There’s the Diabase Basalt which seemed to be fairly magnetically susceptible. The most magnetically susceptible rock seemed to be the granite. This is due to the high levels of potassium in the rock.

I really enjoyed finding the Breccia. There doesn’t seem to be as much of it, and it is the rock type that is indicative of high velocity impact. So it is really exciting when you find good samples of the Breccia. Yesterday I found a good sample of a shatter cone. Essentially the high pressure of the high velocity impact causes the rock to form into cone like structures which point towards the site of the impact. This is similar to any glass like material shattering. We found similar shatter cones later yesterday where dynamite was once used to blow away the mountain side for mining. The cones all pointed towards the hole where the dynamite was originally placed.

Other than that, I have really had fun climbing all of the outcrops!

~Leva