Stroomgroot
Stroomgroot is the dutch word for flume. It means like 'current channel' or something that no one has quite been able to explain to me. Anyway, so people have been asking just what I'm doing with my time and your tax payer funding (don't feel bad about your tax bill, just think of it going to fund me...ok, a lot of it is going to Iraq, but some tiny amount is going to me. I like to think that when April 15th rolls around, Jake and I are just paying ourselves in some round-a-bout way).
So, what have I been doing? Moving a lot of sand, to tell the truth. I'm preparing to run some experiments on the way that alluvial fans form under different slopes. In addition to the completely esoteric application to my Martian alluvial fans, it is also important for understanding terrestrail alluvial fans, because humans like to build cities and roads and vacation homes on them.
The flume is a giant box filled with sand that you can design to have different slopes, size, water levels, water discharges, and sediment discharges. This shows the flume.
The two sides are ~2m x 5 m. The whole flume is 10m x 5m. The floor actually moves up and down on pistons to simulate uplift and subsidence (I'm not using this cool function, unfortunately). The two big beams are rails that the photographic 'robot' slides down to take detailed pictures of the surface so you can measure really small changes in topography as the fan grows and changes. The tank can be filled all the way to the top with water (it is recycled into a big tank under the parking lot, hence there is some strange stuff growing on the very old sand--and you don't want to drink the water). For my experiments, it will be way down, but they do alot of experiments on deltas (rivers running into water - which is basically what Holland was before those darn Dutch built dikes around the whole thing and called it 'land' instead of water')
Right now we are putting in the 'build' -- two side of the flume have been outfitted for different slopes and I'll run a set of experiments over these slopes. After the frame was put in, which although not overly complex took forever on the dutch time scale of arrive at work, have a coffee break, work, have a 2 hour lunch, have another coffee break to prepare to work again, work, have a coffee before you leave. (can you tell I'm a little annoyed). In addition, we were impacted by our inablity to get sand. It turns out that for 2-3 weeks (I could never determine which) the all of the construction companies go on holiday at the same time. So all of the construction suppliers go on holiday. Guess what happens when you need 4 cubic meters of sand. You wait. That's ok, though, because there are lots of coffee breaks between starting and finishing the flume build to go.
So yesterday, I put my foot down, and the build was finished. Leaving me about 4 hours to finish putting the sand in. Usually two graduate students help me. One speaks dutch and can arrange to have the sand fork lifted up to the platform (about 5 feet high) where the flume sits. He, however, had to be in another town. Since I don't know the fork lift guys, that left me with two buckets, one shovel, a cubic meter of sand and three hours (because the building security kicks you out no matter what at 6pm).
Here you can see the set up, on the floor is the bag of sand on a pallet.
Fill the buckets with sand at the pallet. Carry them up the first set of stair (blue bucket). Carry them up the step ladder and place on the railing of the flume (black bucket). When both buckets are on the railing climb over and dump them into the flume. Repeat while singing loudly to your itunes and bribing yourself with soda breaks every 30 minutes.
And here is the sand....
Going...
Going....
Not gone, but the day was done.
So, basically it boils down to manual labor folks. Trust me, you need an advanced degree...really...you do....
I went home, had a very hot showers, a bitter lemon and whiskey, dinner, and two advils. And, I don't hurt nearly as badly as I thought I would today. Which is good, because on Monday I have to put the rest of that bag of sand in.
If you are good, in a few weeks I'll show you something geeky, like a graph of my results.
So, what have I been doing? Moving a lot of sand, to tell the truth. I'm preparing to run some experiments on the way that alluvial fans form under different slopes. In addition to the completely esoteric application to my Martian alluvial fans, it is also important for understanding terrestrail alluvial fans, because humans like to build cities and roads and vacation homes on them.
The flume is a giant box filled with sand that you can design to have different slopes, size, water levels, water discharges, and sediment discharges. This shows the flume.
The two sides are ~2m x 5 m. The whole flume is 10m x 5m. The floor actually moves up and down on pistons to simulate uplift and subsidence (I'm not using this cool function, unfortunately). The two big beams are rails that the photographic 'robot' slides down to take detailed pictures of the surface so you can measure really small changes in topography as the fan grows and changes. The tank can be filled all the way to the top with water (it is recycled into a big tank under the parking lot, hence there is some strange stuff growing on the very old sand--and you don't want to drink the water). For my experiments, it will be way down, but they do alot of experiments on deltas (rivers running into water - which is basically what Holland was before those darn Dutch built dikes around the whole thing and called it 'land' instead of water')
Right now we are putting in the 'build' -- two side of the flume have been outfitted for different slopes and I'll run a set of experiments over these slopes. After the frame was put in, which although not overly complex took forever on the dutch time scale of arrive at work, have a coffee break, work, have a 2 hour lunch, have another coffee break to prepare to work again, work, have a coffee before you leave. (can you tell I'm a little annoyed). In addition, we were impacted by our inablity to get sand. It turns out that for 2-3 weeks (I could never determine which) the all of the construction companies go on holiday at the same time. So all of the construction suppliers go on holiday. Guess what happens when you need 4 cubic meters of sand. You wait. That's ok, though, because there are lots of coffee breaks between starting and finishing the flume build to go.
So yesterday, I put my foot down, and the build was finished. Leaving me about 4 hours to finish putting the sand in. Usually two graduate students help me. One speaks dutch and can arrange to have the sand fork lifted up to the platform (about 5 feet high) where the flume sits. He, however, had to be in another town. Since I don't know the fork lift guys, that left me with two buckets, one shovel, a cubic meter of sand and three hours (because the building security kicks you out no matter what at 6pm).
Here you can see the set up, on the floor is the bag of sand on a pallet.
Fill the buckets with sand at the pallet. Carry them up the first set of stair (blue bucket). Carry them up the step ladder and place on the railing of the flume (black bucket). When both buckets are on the railing climb over and dump them into the flume. Repeat while singing loudly to your itunes and bribing yourself with soda breaks every 30 minutes.
And here is the sand....
Going...
Going....
Not gone, but the day was done.
So, basically it boils down to manual labor folks. Trust me, you need an advanced degree...really...you do....
I went home, had a very hot showers, a bitter lemon and whiskey, dinner, and two advils. And, I don't hurt nearly as badly as I thought I would today. Which is good, because on Monday I have to put the rest of that bag of sand in.
If you are good, in a few weeks I'll show you something geeky, like a graph of my results.
posted by Erin K. | 12:07 PM
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