1996 Geological Society of America Career Contribution Award
Journal of the Virtual Explorer volume in honour of W.D. Means
My laboratory activity centered around the relationship between microstructure and micromotion in deforming rocks. The research approach is an unusual one, in which thin sheets of rock analog material are deformed on the stage of a petrographic microscope. This permits direct observation of progressive microstructural changes and, independently, observation of the associated particle motions. The combination of these two kinds of data provides insight on the types of deformation processes at work in the samples, and perhaps those at work in flowing rocks. The technique was independently pioneered by Janos Urai in Utrecht and by me in Albany, some years ago. There are now ten other labs in the world doing work of this kind.
My second main interest has been in teaching other geologists and their students about structural geology in general, and about microstructure and continuum mechanics in particular. This has resulted in the two books listed below and in microstructure images and movies available on this website.
[Rock analog experiments - 64 images and notes]
The set of 64 sequential, still photomicrographs, shows progressive development of microstructure in various rock analogs, with extensive descriptive notes.
[Analog rock microstructure quicktime movies]
A set of 15 short, time-lapse movies, made by Y. Park and J-H Ree.
Some of the movies show an analog magmatic system; others show an analog quartzite, being deformed, and recovering after deformation stops.
