ooooooooo paradise

It snowed the day after I left to come to Hawaii, it was 76 in Hilo when I landed, i was impressed, you know the weather is mild somewhere the airport and related facilities often only have a roof, no walls. It does rain a lot here, to the tune of 150 inches a year here on the eastern rift zone of the island Hawaii (if that doesn't make sense too you, neenerneener, I'm a geologist, I'll be happy to teach you geology, not geography, geography is just overburden to us hardrock types). here is a simple pic, of a rainbow over a flash separation facility.

Splat! (in ultra slow motion: Wavelite)

Al3(PO4)2(OH)3-(H2O)5, Hydrated Aluminum Phosphate Hydroxide


Wavelite is an interesting mineral, its a soft, yellow-green, what makes it so interesting is it habit of forming radiating globules of crystals, so much so that when you see this Crystal form in a book, wavelite will be the picture they show you to demonstrate this. The crystals them selves are actually orthorhombic needles radiating from the center (radiating along the c-axis; very long, skinny crystals). I found this sample in a small rock shop in California while driving down the 101

its fall? really?

here it is November 7, and I stop for lunch at a taco bell, all the trees are brown, most of the grass (where there is grass, and not sage brush) is brown, this little bush decides to say "HEY, LOOK AT ME!!!", so I obliged it:) and decided that maybe others should take a look at it too.


addendum: the flowers are about 1.5 inches across

Moment Tensor Solutions

The magnitude 5.6 earthquake near San Jose on Tuesday is one of the most "classic" strike/slip fault rupture I've seen in a while, it makes reading a moment tensor solution of the waves very easy, the west side of the fault moving north west (Vader voice on)"come to the dark side Luke"(Vader voice off), tensors like these can be hard to read sometimes without a good idea of what faults in the locality are doing already, lucky for us, this location is very well documented, and the motion was almost totally along the strike of the fault. (thanks to the USGS for collating this information into one, easy to find location)

In Your Face!

So, did you get out and see the full moon at perigee last night? That's as big as it gets, almost 10% bigger than when at apogee, nearly the earths circumference closer than at apogee. It really was a glorious full moon.

nipples and bits

Seems two of the most important things in my job are nipples and bits, pipe nipples and rock bits that is. I use a pile of nipples to connect different sensors (mostly pressure transducers) to different parts of the drill rig to measure all sorts of parameters for the log. As to bits, I don't directly interface with them, just what they produce.

The first pic is a 3.75" drill bit I was given, next to it is a 1/2", sch 40 pipe nipple, 6" long, that will give scale to all the other pics of drill bits, several different sizes of drill bits are used to drill a well. Most people do not realize that a well is not one size, all the way down, as drilling proceeds, different parts of the well have to be sealed off from others, to prevent the migration of fluids, and to provide integrity to the well wall, to help prevent it collapsing in behind the drill bit, at different depths, different weights of drilling mud are needed to keep fluids down in the hole, and too much pressure differential from one part of the hole to another can cause all kinds of headaches (and cost all kinds of $$$), hence, at the surface, most geothermal wells start as a 36" hole for about the first 100 feet, into this, the conductor, a 30" diam pipe is cemented into place.

After the cement is cured, a 26" hole is drilled, with a 20" casing cemented into place(300-600').

Out of the bottom of the 20", a 17.5" hole is drilled to a depth of 600-2000', and a 13.375" casing is cemented in place.

(this pic is of 17.5 and 12.25 bits)
A 12.25 hole is drilled is drilled as deep as 6000 or so feet, with a 9.625 casing.

Misc pics:

Different teeth are needed for different kind of rocks, soft rocks (shale, limestone, sandstone (most sandstones that is) enjoy the ministrations of a wide chisel tooth of a mill tooth bit, knocking out large chunks, and often drilling rapidly down (PDC bits are for a later date). The carbide button tooth is used for hard rocks, like granite, basalts, gneisses, quartzites, and quartz cemented sandstones (near quartzite).
The following pic is of a carbide button chisel tooth bit, well worn, the rounded nubs of carbide used to terminate in a chisel like tooth, this one has seen a lot of hours making lots of hole.


Contrary to popular belief, all of these bits (tri-cone roller bits) do not scrape the rock away, instead, a lot of force is used, pushing down on the bit, as the cones roll around in a circle, an immense amount of force is concentrated at the tip of the tooth as it rolls over the rock, this action simply pops a little chuck of rock out of the drilling surface, much like dropping something heavy on concrete will do, but this action is performed over and over and over, with drilling mud picking up these fragments and carrying them to the surface, for me to collect, study, analyze, classify, and document.

EDIT: the depths listed are just a generality, and for some wells, may be off by a factor of x2, also, deeper wells continue the theme of getting smaller in diam, the next stage is a 8.5" bit with 7" casing and so on add nauseum.....

The Story of My Life