Fall semester so far

It dawned on me during the week that there is only about 5 or 6 weeks left of this term. It has been a really busy term between field trips, class assignments, class tests etc. I had to do a the geochemistry class this term and to be honest I find it rather difficult. Luckily enough next years IFG students from Cork won't be doing it as it is not being offered next year at all. It is only offered every other year and next year I think the class that replaces it is called Global waters or Waters of the World (something like that anyway). The geochem class is intense and it deals with some aspects of chemistry that were new to me, for example, dealing with activities instead of concentrations for acid/base and solubility chemistry. Also it is much more aquatic chemistry than melt chemistry and only now (with 5 weeks left) are we actually moving into the area of melt/magma chemistry. Having said all that, the class tests aren't too bad and Nancy does mark very fairly and she also gives plenty of time on the problem sets, usually about 3 weeks. That gives you plenty of time to put all your heads together to figure stuff out. If any of next year's IFG students are reading this, my advice to you if your not great at chemistry (like me), is find out in advance, what is involved in the class and what will be covered if you think you might like to take global waters/ waters of the world next year. The best way to do this is to email Nancy Hinnman, the lecturer who runs the course. You'll find her details on the UM geology department web page.

We recently had a field trip for our Architecture of Sedimentary deposits class. We drove about on hour out of Missoula and made numerous stops on our way back. It was a great opportunity to put our knowledge into practice. We were able to identify the architectural elements we had discussed in class in the sedimentary rocks we saw on the trip, and from this we were able to discuss the palaeoenvironments associated.