The Veil has been lifted.

The innocence is gone. Will they continue to read, or will the mundane words drive them away?


I spent a fair amount of time at the rock laboratory today, and I frankly don't like the work.

This is what I did.

1) Move bag (<10kg) of slightly crushed core rock onto table.

2) Read label, find corresponding little ziplock bag. Put it aside.

3) Start the small crusher. Warm up the large crusher

4) Put the core rocks into the crusher, the jaws reduce the size of the crush to about 1/2 inch

5)  Place the 1/2 inch cruch into the large crusher. This results in crush about 5mm or less.

6) Repeat 4 and 5 until the <10kg bag is all crushed

7) Dump everything into a splitter (which is shaped like a V. When the lever is pulled, the bottom of the V opens up and the crush is split into two equal halves. This is due to the little slopes under the V which makes them fall in one of two buckets.)

8) Repeat the splitting until there is a small portion left.

9) Sift the remains until everything is <2mm

10) Place <2mm in a rotating plate thing, which is set into a vibrating table thing. The result is a fine powdery substance.

11) Repeat for 20 different bags.

The purpose of this is so that the powder can be more easily tested in the 'chem lab' with acids. Powder == increased surface area + little room for unknown embedded material. The splitter is used so that we could get a representative sample instead of just scooping a portion from the beginning.