In which Barbie shows her other outfits.
Oct. 8th, 2011 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reynardoYou see, there is a Paleontologist Barbie, and at least two of them are out there with their own Geologist Companions, tapping the rocks, brushing the dust from the bones, and learning more about our earth. And the lovely Evelyn, who runs the blog Georneys, decided it would be a good idea to Dress Barbie as a Geologist for Hallowe'en.
Barbie is a Volcanologist. That means she works on volcanoes. Now to tell the truth, most of the time she's stuck in the office in front of a computer, processing all the data she has gathered over the past few months. For every month in the field, the average volcanologist spends another five back at the office.
Also, they don't just look at active volcanoes. The volcanologists look at dormant volcanoes, and (hopefully) dead ones, to try and see what the past activity was like and to try and learn what will happen in the future.
But where's the fun in showing photos of Barbie at her desk?
Barbie here is getting ready to go out to the active volcano she has been researching, She needs to take the temperature of the lava in the latest lava flow.
The bruise on her forehead happened last week. She was walking near the crater when the eruption started, and a piece of flying pumice gave her a nasty whack. She will always remember to wear her safety helmet in the field now!
Here she has a full set of Nomex protective gear. She wears leather boots with shiny covers to keep the heat off her feet. Her trousers and her jacket will reflect the heat away from her, and her large headwear will keep her lovely hair safe from flying ash and cinders. At the moment the volcano is just letting out lava, but Barbie knows that could change at any moment. Her gauntlets allow her to hold the probe at one end and accurately place it in the lava at the other without burning her hands.
Volcanologists prefer natural fibres such as wool and cotton. These will not melt onto your skin like nylon and polyester will, so they're a lot safer if the heat gets nasty.
This was taken at the moment that Barbie inserted the probe into the hot lava. The Thermocouple in the probe measures the heat by using two different metals. These metals each generate a voltage when exposed to heat, and the difference in the voltage registers on the dial and tells Barbie how hot the lava is. If she were to try and use a glass thermometer, it would break.
The reason for the slight shakyness of the picture is that just as Barbie put the probe in the lava, there was a minor earth tremor. Volcanologists prefer to go out in pairs because then one person can keep an eye on what's happening around them while the other one does what is necessary. Luckily this time the tremor wasn't anything serious. If it had been, Barbie would have walked briskly out of trouble - she had checked for a couple of different safe paths out of the lava field before she started with the measurements. She knew that trying to run on that rough surface would be very dangerous - she might accidentally run on a thin lava crust and fall through, or sprain her ankle.
Barbie is trying to keep a rock between her and the hottest lava, which is flowing from the vent uphill from where she is lying. The ground there is too unstable to walk on, or she would try and get a sample from that lava instead. The bright orange colour of the lava shows how hot it is, and if this were a moving picture you would see it flowing down from left to right.
As the lava hits this patch of ground, it pools and cools down, becoming red then black. Barbie is trying to get the temperature of a patch under a rock, which has been insulated from the cool ground and has stayed quite hot. She has placed the end of the probe into the hot patch.
The poor thing must be sweating heavily, even under all that protective gear. Luckily the lava flows quite slowly at this point. One of the dangers though is if a shelf of cooled lava collapses, and the very hot and runny lava suddenly starts flowing towards her. Barbie knows that many volcanologists are injured or even killed in the line of duty, but the work that she and other volcanologists do can save many more lives by predicting eruptions and knowing how the volcanoes will act when the time comes. In addition to observing and measuring lava flows she will place seismometers and tiltmeters on the sides of mountains, view the mountain through a correlation spectrometer to see how much gas is coming out, and test the chemical composition of the crystal deposits left near the gas vents. She is a very busy worker!
When she gets back to the research centre where the data is collated and analysed, Barbie will make sure she has quite a few cold drinks of water or diluted cordial to replace all the sweat. She will also carefully sponge out the inside of her protective gear otherwise it will become smelly very quickly.
Thank you for letting us photograph you at work, Volcanologist Barbie!
Barbie is a Volcanologist. That means she works on volcanoes. Now to tell the truth, most of the time she's stuck in the office in front of a computer, processing all the data she has gathered over the past few months. For every month in the field, the average volcanologist spends another five back at the office.
Also, they don't just look at active volcanoes. The volcanologists look at dormant volcanoes, and (hopefully) dead ones, to try and see what the past activity was like and to try and learn what will happen in the future.
But where's the fun in showing photos of Barbie at her desk?
Barbie here is getting ready to go out to the active volcano she has been researching, She needs to take the temperature of the lava in the latest lava flow.
The bruise on her forehead happened last week. She was walking near the crater when the eruption started, and a piece of flying pumice gave her a nasty whack. She will always remember to wear her safety helmet in the field now!
Here she has a full set of Nomex protective gear. She wears leather boots with shiny covers to keep the heat off her feet. Her trousers and her jacket will reflect the heat away from her, and her large headwear will keep her lovely hair safe from flying ash and cinders. At the moment the volcano is just letting out lava, but Barbie knows that could change at any moment. Her gauntlets allow her to hold the probe at one end and accurately place it in the lava at the other without burning her hands.
Volcanologists prefer natural fibres such as wool and cotton. These will not melt onto your skin like nylon and polyester will, so they're a lot safer if the heat gets nasty.
This was taken at the moment that Barbie inserted the probe into the hot lava. The Thermocouple in the probe measures the heat by using two different metals. These metals each generate a voltage when exposed to heat, and the difference in the voltage registers on the dial and tells Barbie how hot the lava is. If she were to try and use a glass thermometer, it would break.
The reason for the slight shakyness of the picture is that just as Barbie put the probe in the lava, there was a minor earth tremor. Volcanologists prefer to go out in pairs because then one person can keep an eye on what's happening around them while the other one does what is necessary. Luckily this time the tremor wasn't anything serious. If it had been, Barbie would have walked briskly out of trouble - she had checked for a couple of different safe paths out of the lava field before she started with the measurements. She knew that trying to run on that rough surface would be very dangerous - she might accidentally run on a thin lava crust and fall through, or sprain her ankle.
Barbie is trying to keep a rock between her and the hottest lava, which is flowing from the vent uphill from where she is lying. The ground there is too unstable to walk on, or she would try and get a sample from that lava instead. The bright orange colour of the lava shows how hot it is, and if this were a moving picture you would see it flowing down from left to right.
As the lava hits this patch of ground, it pools and cools down, becoming red then black. Barbie is trying to get the temperature of a patch under a rock, which has been insulated from the cool ground and has stayed quite hot. She has placed the end of the probe into the hot patch.
The poor thing must be sweating heavily, even under all that protective gear. Luckily the lava flows quite slowly at this point. One of the dangers though is if a shelf of cooled lava collapses, and the very hot and runny lava suddenly starts flowing towards her. Barbie knows that many volcanologists are injured or even killed in the line of duty, but the work that she and other volcanologists do can save many more lives by predicting eruptions and knowing how the volcanoes will act when the time comes. In addition to observing and measuring lava flows she will place seismometers and tiltmeters on the sides of mountains, view the mountain through a correlation spectrometer to see how much gas is coming out, and test the chemical composition of the crystal deposits left near the gas vents. She is a very busy worker!
When she gets back to the research centre where the data is collated and analysed, Barbie will make sure she has quite a few cold drinks of water or diluted cordial to replace all the sweat. She will also carefully sponge out the inside of her protective gear otherwise it will become smelly very quickly.
Thank you for letting us photograph you at work, Volcanologist Barbie!
