By Chuck Schepke
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA – On Sunday, Nov. 4, Roscommon High School (RHA) Science teachers Chuck Schepke, Eric Stenson and Holly Maddox drove six RHS students to Indianapolis to attend the National Geological Society of America (GSA) Convention in Indiana for two days. This six day meeting was attended by over 5,600 scientists and their graduate students, representing 56 different countries, presenting their current research on various aspects of geoscience investigations.
On Sunday, they initially attended two presentations from the Indiana Geologic Survey (IGS), – one on “Indiana’s Fossil Record” given by their state paleontologist and one on the “Geology of Indiana” given by Todd Thompson (head of the IGS). The students then went around the convention center with Dean Moosavi from the GSA and visited vendor booths, intergovernmental agencies booths (NASA, EPA, USGS, etc.), international governmental agencies and societies, and around 40 plus university booths from institutions from around the nation.
The students attended a GSA NASA Mars Rover presentation
The Roscommon students were the first ever high school group to attend the convention. To document this, a GSA TV crew followed them around the convention center and filmed them going around with Dean Moosavi. You can see the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOweGlIRwtw&list=PLGVe6BxyFHNVtfUS5d-U_N5mTwxG2XNiN&index=10 ).
During the time we were walking around visiting various booths, the students got to meet John Esch from MI DEQ Geological Survey section. They were nervous to visit booths at first and were overwhelmed by the immensity of the convention center and the exhibits, but after awhile they would, on their own volition, walk to a booth, introduce themselves as a RHS student, and ask the vendor, the scientists present at the exhibit, or university professor to explain their service or equipment.
One of the highlights Sunday afternoon were talking to Dr. Victoria Edgerton from Manchester University who does paleontology work as a visiting scientist for the Indiana Children’s Museum where the students got to stand next to a mounted T-rex dinosaur cast.
In front of the TRex casting is (l-r) Samantha Defour, Kolby Tyler, Caleb Jacobs, Brandon Kiss-Mitchell,
Micheal Ficaj, Jon Suvada, Holly Maddox, and Chuck Schepke.
They visited booths that showcased digital mapping technology, scientific equipment (petrological “rock” polarizing light microscopes and looked at rock mineralogy in thin section, were introduced to spectral analyzers-utilizing fundamentals of quantum mechanics they learned in high school chemistry to identify elemental composition of materials using diffuse x-rays, radioisotope/radiological dating equipment, x-ray diffraction equipment that allows one to determine the crystalline structure or lattice arrangement of solids based off the symmetry of scattered xrays, ground penetrating radar technology, stream modeling tables for civil engineering and fluvial sedimentation studies, and more), and booths of various scientific societies.
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Kolby Tyler looking into a rock (petrological) microscope
The students got to pick up posters, pamphlets, periodicals, and other trinkets from the booths they visited till 7 p.m. Sunday evening.
The next morning, the students attended actual scientific technical sessions that geoscientists came to the meeting to attend. They attended the technical session sponsored by the Planetary Geology section of the GSA, which had the presentation topics focused on the current research being done on the geologic processes occurring on Saturn’s moons. Most of the presenters were university facility who are members of various NASA exploration mission teams. Some of the presentations they attended are listed below.
-“Characterizing Strain in Enceladus’ Cratered Terrain” using physics to modeling geomorphological (topographical) surface features.
-“Encleladus: Saturn’s Regenerating Icy Moon” modeling cryovolcansim by changing gravitational pull (tidal heating) by Saturn on its moon Encledladus.
-“Long-Term Tectonic Deformation of Saturn’s Moon, Rhea, Dione, and Tethys” – comparative analysis of the differences and similarities of each moon’s prospective geology and possible mechanisms behind what is driving the geological processes.
Roscommon High School students learn about ground penetrating radar
The students went back to the Exhibit Hall to finish visiting the booths they did not get to see. They also toured the graduate student poster display session, which took up half the Exhibit Hall. They had an opportunity to hear a couple students present their posters to them and they ended up the day listening to a presentation on the new geology discovered on Mars by the Mars Curiosity Rover by the lead planetary geologist of the mission, Liz Rampe. The students overall enjoyed the entire experience and more importantly they had the chance to experience the interdisciplinary nature of geosciences (using the fields of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, and Engineering integratively) because unfortunately, these subject matters have been traditionally taught to high school students in isolation from one another, though the current trend in education is trying to change this scenario.
