Nina and Morgan have fun looking at each and every recovered meteorite and its number during the midseason inventory.
Today the weather was overcast, which gave a strange flat light to the ground.
These aren’t great conditions in which to search for meteorites because 1) they’re harder to spot, and 2) it’s harder for us to see changes in topography while we’re driving on our skidoos, which might cause us to inadvertently tip over (see last post for details). So instead of going out on the hunt, we stayed in camp to do a number of important camp chores, including the midseason meteorite inventory.
An example of a sample in a tagged collection bag. The embossed 23000 tag is separated from the sample by several layers of plastic (we are folding masters).
When we recover a meteorite, we follow a strict sampling protocol that includes giving every sample a unique identifying number. These numbers are embossed on metal tags, which are affixed to the sample bag (without touching the sample). As we move through our procedures, Jim will record the number along with other identifying characteristics for the sample in his notebook, while Johnny will record the number and obtain GPS information about the sample’s location. This means that there are two people keeping records about what materials have been recovered. Before we depart Antarctica, we want to be absolutely certain that we know exactly what we’ve recovered and that we know where it is in our sample containers. For our non-scientist readers, good organization is a key component to any research project. You can be doing the greatest research in the world and it won’t matter one bit if you don’t document it accurately. But of course, everyone has typoed something in their lives, so we can’t expect to be perfectly accurate documentarians all the time–but we can check and recheck our work to remove inaccuracies as soon as possible. So today we compared our two lists with the labeled meteorite bags to iron out any inconsistencies. It turns out that we made very few mistakes, which is impressive considering that we have already recovered 361 samples (!!!). Now these samples are safely sealed up in bags and in their cold-storage boxes, ready to be shipped back to the U.S. While we always wish for good weather, it feels good to have gotten this very important inventory completed. Today marks three weeks in the field for the first wave of team members, and I have a great feeling about our next three weeks here. Maybe we can get another 361 samples?!
–Posted by Nina in an organizational glow, south Miller Range, 5 January 2016