Earth Science- summer internship.

The Earth science internship is on its 4th week now this time I have had the opportunity to meet new people that like me have an amazing interest on science and like to explore the environment around us.  All of interns of the Earth Science program are still in high school or have recently completed it.  The team was divided into groups that would be taken to a specialty this summer.  We are all working on different researches, and they are all very exciting!.  In my case I am working in a paleobiology lab, which is found in the Geology Corner.

We work with professor Jonathan Payne, he is an awesome educator and a very nice person. There is around eighteen people working in the lab all with different background  and they are all amazing!. At the same time we work into three groups doing different researches.  We work on collecting data of organism such as Ammonites, Gastropods, and Foraminifera. 

Size matters

The main purpose of the researches is to determine the changes in size of the organisms mentioned. We work with primary sources mostly to determine the size and time period when the different species lived.  It is terrific that we can actually get our hands on something that is a hundred years of age, I had never imagined I would ever have the opportunity to do this, it’s very exciting. Anyway, we are interested in looking at the sizes because they can tell us the background of such organisms.  It would be hard to imagine for instance that the size of the forams' growing pattern correlated with the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I am working with ammonites and  even though we are missing data from a time period we hope to get an idea of how their growing patters correlated with factors of the environment.  

So we all work in different species but we all work together and the working place is stupendous as well, the people in the lab are amazing!

Wednesdays

My favorite day of the week is Wednesday! I love how we all get together to learn a little more about science in general.  so far we have had a field trip to Monterey,a lab on plate tectonics and labs on carbon dioxide and water.  I simply loved them, I had the amazing opportunity to be around people passionate about science and their profession.  They have inspired me even more to enter the science field in a future.  

I love how summer is going , I have had many moments of fun an learning with the people around me, specially with my friends Ngoc and Robert (since we are most of the time together) . I hope the rest of the summer is as magnificent as it has been so far.