Geology Research

This project is my first ever independent research done. The story starts with me hiking with my friends near an extinct cinder cone in the Mojave Desert and bringing one of the rocks to our physics professor as a souvenir. He then proposed to make a project out of studying the physical and chemical properties of these rocks, and I fired up with the motivation to study that piece of rock.

The next year was spent on trying different methods to study these rock formations. With the external and chemical analyses, as well as with the X-Ray diffraction methodology, a conclusion has been reached that the rock sample falls under the category of basalts. The external analysis included careful preparation of the rock samples for the microstructural analysis. For the chemical analysis, the theory behind the nature of ions was used in order to determine which ions were present in the rock sample. And for the powder diffraction methodology, the rock dust was carefully prepared for the analysis of the X-Ray diffraction graphing, used for the identification of chemical structures present in the rock samples.

The conclusion was reached that the rock samples are highly concentrated in minerals such as olivine and magnetite, which highly consist of Iron and Magnesium. The results of this research were being presented at a SACNAS research conference in Hawaii in Fall 2019. The poster for the project can be found here.

Advisors:

Dr. Jayesh Bhakta: bhaktaj@lacitycollege.edu

Dr. Terry Boan: boanta@lacitycollege.edu