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. [Analog
rock
microstructure
quicktime
movies]
[Rock
analog
experiments - 64 images and notes]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.
