Image: The ship Galilee at anchor.

Simon Thode, Ph.D. student in Johns Hopkins University’s History of Science, Medicine, and Technology program, delivered Wednesday’s DTM seminar entitled, “Science at Sea: The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism Pacific Ocean Survey and the Ship as Magnetic Observatory.” Thode’s research interests focus on the shift in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from scientific fieldwork towards experimental science conducted in the laboratory through the lens of physics. Aiming to problematize this narrative, Thode has concentrated on the work of Louis Bauer who led DTM’s magnetic surveys of the Pacific Ocean from the 1890s to the 1920s. Thode argues that although the global magnetic survey can be seen as a reaction to the reductionism of working solely in a laboratory, it is rather part of an older effort to bring the science of fixed locations into the field.

Image: Crew of the Galilee, 1907

Along with many photos of the ships and crew of the Galilee and Carnegie that were utilized in the ocean surveys, Thode offered various insights into day-to-day life aboard both vessels that he had garnered from letters and journals. The ocean surveys required a ship fabricated from a minimum of magnetic materials that could interfere with measurements. Before undertaking the construction of a special ship, Bauer obtained the Galilee, a wooden vessel that had as much iron removed from it as possible. During early cruises of the ship, the scientific crew was able to learn the corrections that had to be applied to raw data as a result of the iron that remained in its construction.

For the second year in a row, Rick Carlson and Steve Shirey will be participating in the Smithsonian Science Education Academies for Teachers, a professional development program organized by the National Science Research Center of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academies. On Tuesday, 29 June, the group will host fifteen science teachers at DTM as part of the “Earth’s History and Global Change” academy. The day will begin with a presentation on determining geological time. The teachers will then be split in half with one group joining Shirey for a hands-on lecture about rocks and field work and how this leads to an understanding of how geologic processes—ranging from the formation of continents to the origin of the Earth—work. Carlson, along with Mass Spectrometry Laboratory Manager Tim Mock, will help the second group determine the uranium-lead ages of a variety of zircon crystals using the lab’s laser-ablation ICP-MS. The lesson will include the basics of mass spectrometry, the composition of minerals, and the actual age dating of the zircons. Click here for more information on the program.