January 20, 2009
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Weird Science
Not much going on in Matt Land, so I want to tell a few stories from the field… I was reminded of these oddities as I pull things together for a presentation tomorrow. I might have mentioned these before, but now I have pictures!
The first is a really remarkable story. This is the skamper, another one of our trailers. So, one day my boss left his bike sitting against this trailer and left to do work. After he left, one of the drillers happened to look over at the trailer and noticed that the bike was ON FIRE! He quickly ran over and knocked the bike away from the trailer. So, what happened?
As best as we can gather, the bike slipped down onto the battery, and the handles connected the two terminals, creating an electric arc, and melting/igniting all non-metal items on the bike, including brakes, cables, and a helmet.
If you thought that was crazy, this one is even more strange. By the way, this picture above was featured on the cover of the UGS Survey Notes quarterly magazine.
As we drilled at site 6, our previous well started to shoot water out of it like a Las Vegas fountain. Not that strange, until you delve a little deeper. Here is an artist’s rendition of what happened.
We were drilling a hole known as 6D. 6ABC was complete, with 3 wells in that hole. A is the shortest, about 200′ feet deep. B was about 350′, above the bedrock, still in alluvium. C is about 400′ deep, within the bedrock. As we drilled (at about 450′), water gushed out, but not out of C, which was the shortest path for the water. No, the water gushed from deep within the bedrock to the middle well, within the alluvium. This is some of the most direct evidence that the alluvial aquifer is very, very well connected to the bedrock aquifer. How this happened, we do not know.
(c)APSure this is amazing, but something more amazing happens today.
Good luck, Barack… you will need it…
…after THAT one…
Comments (6)
There couldn’t just have been a lens of water at 350′ that got shoved over? That’s a shorter path, y’know! Anyway, yeah, I’ve got some presidential TV-watching to do!!
happy inauguration day!
that bike story is crazy, what is a motorbike or bicycle?
@pezzam -
Just your standard mountain bike…
hey matt!
i like the field stories… burning up a bike huh? crazy!
Ok Great horned owl (YESSS SCORE JEREMY)
The Spring was really cool.
Your dog really loves you. The Jerky is just a bonus.
What your well was exemplifying was fracture flow. Your intermediate well is located near a fracture while the other two are not. pressure changes in the deep bedrock well will force water out of the fracture and through your well. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.