Smash and Grab - How Big of a Sample Do You Need?
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[00:00:00]
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: In the middle of having a discussion about episode titles and we just, we've got to hash this out with the record button on, I think. this will give the listener insight into how, I would say, well, we're both pretty bad at titles.
Some are, better [00:00:30] than others, but we we,
always debate them.
So it's like two ignorant idiots debating each other and sometimes yelling at each
other about episode
titles.
Chris Bolhuis: Oh my gosh. Do you remember back in season one, four years ago, we would publish an episode and then change
the title the day that we published the episode, we like changed it four times during the course of the day. You
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, just so stupid.
Chris Bolhuis: we,
we we almost broke up over a title about, I think it [00:01:00] was, it was an episode dealing with the Great Lakes. Something like
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah,
that was that. was one of our big fights And then we went
Chris Bolhuis: Oh man,
funny, funny. All
Dr. Jesse Reimink: counseling and got it figured out.
Chris Bolhuis: Yes, let's get the listener up to date on what we're talking about today, Jesse. This is
you. This is your idea.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: all right So I want to lead with a question to you which happens to be my episode title idea Well, okay, the backstory here is I was asked to write a, a review chapter, really, for this big book. It's called a treatise on geochemistry. It's kind of [00:01:30] like a graduate student's handbook for geochemistry.
It covers everything. There's chapters on everything from the composition of the continental crust to, what we know about, uh, large, low shear velocity provinces and the deep mantle, et cetera, et cetera, but all geochemistry related,
Chris Bolhuis: is this a collaboration? This, this
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the book,
Yeah. So there'll be like the way this works, there'll be like, a lead editor and several editors that are kind of sectional editors.
And what they do is they go around and ask people to write specific review chapters. So like my colleague, Andy Smy [00:02:00] was asked to write a review chapter on a technique that metamorphic petrologists use a lot. called depth profiling, and sort of a metamorphic petrology section. I was asked to write a chapter, get this, on geological sampling, which is as vague as it sounds, and there was no guidance given on, what to write about.
It was just like, you do geological sampling, write a review chapter about it. So,
that's kind of,
Chris Bolhuis: you get to read the chapter first though, right? So you knew what the chapter was
Dr. Jesse Reimink: no, I [00:02:30] have to write the chapter. Out
Chris Bolhuis: oh, I thought you were reviewing a chapter that was
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I wrote a review chapter, like a review. It's like a review, a summary of the work out there. So I wrote the chapter. It's meant
to be like a high level review of what we know about geological sampling. So this is a difficult exercise in this.
There's some interesting stuff that came out of it, I think. But Chris, you you. and I do geological sampling All the time and you and I have done a lot together. Here's my episode idea. And. Question to you, which is how big of a sample do [00:03:00] you, need? How big of a sample do you
Chris Bolhuis: Wait a minute. Are you are you suggesting that this is the title of the episode or the title of the chapter or both?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I'm suggesting title of the episode. The title of the chapter that I wrote is geological sampling, but I, also use that, that how big of a sample do you need as the title for a poster at the geochemistry conference recently. And, uh,
Chris Bolhuis: I really,
I think you're trying to be clever right now. You're, you're rather proud of yourself right
now, aren't you? You got a little smirk on your face and, and you, when you said, How big of a [00:03:30] sample do you need? Question mark. Um, you think that, that that's, that's rather
Dr. Jesse Reimink: no, here's why I'm smirking is because I think I know what your answer will be to the question. How big of a sample do You need Chris? And
Chris Bolhuis: Well, I am, I like the, big stuff.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: answer is How big is the, truck bed? Really? Right. How, how big of a rock can I lift?
Chris Bolhuis: answer to that is, do I need a bigger truck? That's the right. That's
the answer to the question. So,
yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you and I've collected some monumental, samples. I
think, what did we do [00:04:00] one year? We always drove your F two 50, right. Or three
Chris Bolhuis: Yes.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Which one was it? 250.
diesel pickup truck
that could carry a lot. We always, loaded up a trailer and one year we got like a heavy duty dump trailer, didn't we?
And just had That loaded up with rocks, the whole truck bed plus camping
Chris Bolhuis: That was the Grand Valley trailer. They let us borrow that. We actually took that to the Gore Mountain Mine up in upstate New York, and the owner of the mine said, you guys can take whatever you want, and I [00:04:30] don't know if he really knew what he was
saying,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: because you, me and our buddy Andy, uh, went down there and I mean, I have a beautiful gore mountain garnet sitting right at the entrance to our house and the path that comes to our house. I mean, it's huge. This thing, I can hardly roll It over by myself. I don't know, like it must've been three of us to lift this one thing into the truck bed.
I was impressive. so we collect big samples is the point.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Well, I, I, I'm, I'm in disagreement. Let's say for the title for this episode
is, should [00:05:00] not be how big of a sample do I need?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: What's
Chris Bolhuis: I think a much better, mine is smash and grab.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay, that's a good one. That fits as well. Alright. I, I, okay, I think, I think I see a way we can merge this. Smash and grab, colon. how big of a sample do you need?
Chris Bolhuis: How big? All right. I don't know about that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: One of my PhD supervisors always said, you should never have a colon in your title. just decide what it is. Don't make it two things and bring them [00:05:30] together. Just make a decision.
Chris Bolhuis: good advice. That's good
advice.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Anyway,
Chris Bolhuis: All right. So where are we in this paper, Jesse? Uh, like, have you
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it's written It's been reviewed. it's officially available online now, but, but
it's, it'll be in like a huge volume. Yeah, I'll send you a PDF for sure. so this was a difficult exercise and this might give the listener a little bit of a window into the some insight here, geological sampling go. I mean, Chris, what does your, what would. What would you [00:06:00] want if you're reading that? I'm very curious. What would you, if, if you're going to read and it's, it's with a geochemistry bend and with a like solid. you know, metamorphic igneous rocks kind of lilt to it. So what would you want to
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. I have a take on this. I would want to know because you're, this is not about geologic sampling just because Jesse wants this in his yard,
like all the, you know, so much of what we have done, this is for, for scientific purposes. Review. This is for, lab work to be done.
So what exactly do you need [00:06:30] to document when you take a
sample? Like, do you need to take the, the magnetic orientation of any magnetic minerals in there? Obviously latitude and longitude. what, yeah. I mean, what actually goes into this? I'm interested because. I have never done that sort of work.
And I suppose that you and Mike Akerson did this this summer when you were up in the Northwest territories, collecting samples for the
Smithsonian, right. It's [00:07:00] essentially what you guys
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's exactly right. And, and I mean, I'm sure, you know, you, Chris and, and everybody else who got an undergrad degree, when you did field camp, you kind of learned about documentation, right. About, what kind of notes you should take when you're looking at an outcrop, how you should archive that information.
And so it's, It's really quite. For geochemistry, at least, for the sort of petrology stuff where we're not actually looking, for instance, at magnetic signals, like if you want to do magnetic work, that's kind of a different sampling strategy, and you have [00:07:30] to document it differently. if you want to do sediment core logging, it's kind of a very different sample archiving.
For our purposes, it's quite simple. It's exactly what you said. It's latitude, longitude. And you want to know really well where the sample is. You want to be able to outcrop and say, Oh, so and So collected a sample here. Jesse Reimink was here in 2018 and grabbed a sample from right there. And I want to grab one right next to it or right above it or right near it or a different unit.
So you kind of want to know that level of [00:08:00] information.
Chris Bolhuis: Are you able to use your phone then for the latitude and longitude?
Is that
Dr. Jesse Reimink: They've gotten, pretty good Um, the iPhone, when you're in airplane mode up in the north without any service, it does an okay job at, GPS. It's still not as accurate as like a Garmin device that is connected to, you know, eight satellites or something. So it's not like a meter scale.
Resolution or, or
Chris Bolhuis: What about a, what about like a Garmin watch? Those things are, are pretty good too.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. You know, I haven't actually tried that with my Garmin watch just [00:08:30] cause it soaks up the battery when you're like live tracking all the time. So I just, I have like a Garmin inReach for emergency communication that you can just drop pins to, so I just use that. But the more important thing for me, and this is where, so in this paper, There's a bit of storytelling because it's like, here's what I did wrong in the field back in the day. there are times that I would go back to a field site that I'd, I'd been to, and I had sampled two years later and I couldn't find my own sample. that's like an, It's kind of an embarrassing thing to admit, [00:09:00] frankly, like, because I should know that I should have, like, I'm not asking somebody else to repeat my, my exercise.
I'm trying to repeat it. Like, I should remember that I should have documentation. So kind of what I've evolved to doing is the GPS coordinates you got to have and write it down into multiple different places, your field notebook, your Garmin, another field notebook, or your, your colleague's field notebook, have it multiple places.
And I always take photos and have Those photos a couple different places. It's Take the sample out, label it, put it back where you got it, and take a photo in place [00:09:30] so that you can really find it, because even with a meter resolution, it's sometimes kind of hard to find where did somebody take a sample in like a three square meter area.
Chris Bolhuis: absolutely. Uh, I also would assume that it's important to be able to get right back to where you found your samples from. From, because if you write anything controversial, then somebody else might say, I'm going to test
this because I don't think Jesse Reimink is right. I'm going to go back there and come to my own
conclusions.
Does that, [00:10:00] is that a
part of the process? And does that ever actually
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely.
Uh, it's a very, I think a very common part of the process. And Chris, I, you and I have this experience from, from like banging around in the Black Hills looking for, I remember looking for the star lights. We were trying to get star lights out of this schist and we ended up finding them eventually, but descriptions are like, okay, there wasn't a GPS coordinate.
I don't, Believe, but it was pretty specific. It was like you drive along, you know, highway, whatever you turn left on this road, you drive for 1. 2 miles, you get off and you hike [00:10:30] 120 meters into the woods. And there's a little round outcropper is something like quite specific, but you end up getting into the woods and there's like a couple different round outcrops.
And you're like, which one's it, is it the North side of the Hill or the South side of this little knoll? it takes a while. So your title is really good because. It's really hard to accurately smash and grab. Like it takes time. you know what I mean?
To find these
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I think the descriptions are purposefully
vague. I don't know. Maybe that's to protect the site. I'm not
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:11:00] So here's my take on that is, and because I've, I've done this, I've felt this, when you're out in the field and you're doing your own work and you're collecting samples of rocks that nobody's sampled really before I looked at, and you're on week two, it gets to be. A lot like work and there's a tendency to get a little bit loose in your documentation and be like, okay, this is a granitoid nice sample, blah, blah, blah. Okay.
I got it. I got the point. Take a photo. Go [00:11:30] away. What helps me, because I've done this wrong, I've done this bad, I have gotten loose in the field, and then come back and been like, oh crap, that's a really amazing sample, I need to go back there and get more, and you go back, and you're like, crap, I took kind of lazy field notes, like it, I can't exactly find it, or like, I took one photo, and I lost it.
I didn't duplicate it or something, you know, so that's happened to me before with a really cool discovery of a rock and it's embarrassing. So I always kind of keep that in mind, like, hey, I'm collecting a new rock. what if I find the [00:12:00] oldest rock in the world?
What if this is it? I want to be able to come back here and there's going to be dozens of other people who want to come back here to sample this thing. So I always try and keep that in
Chris Bolhuis: I would imagine, I have a question for you. Do you find that as you get older and more experienced in this, and you've gone through the embarrassment maybe of not taking really good
field notes, do you find yourself being more patient with that aspect of the job now? In terms of, I have a protocol and I'm going to be very deliberate about going
through that protocol. Have you
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:12:30] Yep, for sure. Much less rushed. I'm less like, Oh, I got to go to seven outcrops today. If I get five and I document them really well, that's good. that's like a win. That's a good day. As opposed to seven and doing it kind of quick and dirty, you know what I mean? So it,
for sure that has, That has kind of happened.
So I, some of this writing was kind of like this personal take out because like I've screwed up before. and haven't, hasn't turned into a massive embarrassment, but there are people, and this goes back to, to your phrase [00:13:00] of, whoever sees the most rocks is the best geologist. One of the best geologists I've ever probably met in this, this regard is a woman named Val Jackson, who mapped the north of Canada for 40 years.
She had field notes from 1989, that she still has to this day, that are unbelievably detailed, that allowed us to go back to outcrops that she visited, walk up to them, find exactly where the sample was, and be like, this is it, this is [00:13:30] the Val Jackson 1989 sample site. And we sampled it, and lo and behold, it's the same thing. And we've, we've published several papers, I have a PhD student working on that whole project, big grant funded, on the backs of Val's very clear sampling notes. which is just an exercise, like, here's how to do it right. This is how you do
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. And it's interesting because she did that very early on in her
career too, which is, I think, a little
unusual. that's
that's amazing. So Jesse, when you are tasked with, [00:14:00] I need to go out and get samples. what are some things to avoid?
we just talked about what are some things to do.
So what do you need to like steer clear of when looking for samples? What about some of
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, there's a couple. I think, it depends what you're after for sure. But for me, I'm usually looking for like the, baseline rock, like, uh, for going out to the Sierra Nevadas. We want to collect the granodiorite. We want like an average of that?
We don't want one of the [00:14:30] veins that are cross cutting it.
We don't want one of the apalite dykes that are cross cutting it. We don't want too weird of a sample. We kind of want an average sample. So you kind of
walk around
Chris Bolhuis: you kind of talking like Tuolumne
Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly. To the Tuolumne yeah, in the, in Yosemite National Park, like, if we're after the sentinel granodiorite, or one of the johnson granite porphyry, or one of the rock types in there, and you kind of want the average, is what I'm after, and so we want to avoid things like veins, or alteration, a lot of like weathering rinds on the edges, you kind of want to [00:15:00] just so much.
Ignore those, and not sample those for this purpose. But I think, Chris, and this is something that we all struggle with. I'd be curious your thoughts on this, because you and I have experienced this. When we go out, we're often after the spectacular, cool stuff. The rare stuff, frankly. Even if you're walking around looking for the average stuff, your eye is drawn to the cool, unique rock.
I think we all, there's always a little bit of a bias in sampling, like if, I don't know, Chris, if I was like, [00:15:30] Okay.
go sample the Gore Mountain mine, how would you go about doing it? cause it's, it'd be hard
Chris Bolhuis: Where are the biggest garnets in the prettiest gabbro in the host rock and which one has the best, like, I don't know, the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the
halo.
Chris Bolhuis: the
garnets.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: we talked about, like, uh, last episode
or two episodes ago, right? Totally. And that's the coolest, if you're going to study it, I want that one. I want to study that one, but it's perhaps not the best ever. So there's always this bias towards like coolness that we all kind of [00:16:00] have or uniqueness or, so it's a difficult thing.
You, you have to really fight to kind of avoid that a bit.
Chris Bolhuis: Oh, so you're talking about avoid the, I don't like this because I want to do the pretty
stuff and I don't want to do, is that what you're
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Kind of. I mean, I think there's certainly times when you want to, like if I said, Chris, let's do a project where we want to understand how if we want to understand how the spectacular garnets formed, then we go for the spectacular garnets, but if we want to understand how the rock itself, like what is the tectonic setting of the rock itself, the most [00:16:30] spectacular weirdest garnets are probably not the best.
We might want to get more of an average, which is
Chris Bolhuis: Got you.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: a little bit more of a boring rock in the same quarry or something like that. Um, Yeah. That's not a great example, but you know, that kind of makes sense. Like how, how do you find this? Because you, when we're going out on our rock collecting trips, it's like.
We're always looking for cool, unique, spectacular.
How much important stuff do you think we walk? We sort of skip over, I'd guess a lot probably. [00:17:00]
Chris Bolhuis: I would. I would assume so, but the other side of that though, is that you, when you're looking for these very hard to find, locations, just the, the number of mileage and walking and often driving that you do, you get to see, the variety
also. And sometimes then you're, you find things you didn't expect.
you and I have personally had this experience, I think, many
times, um, where we come across things that are just absolutely beautiful specimens. [00:17:30] And we get to sit there and talk about it, but that's not what we were
after. We were looking for something
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's true. yeah,
no, that's a, that's a very good point. I mean, what is the one, I remember a couple from the black Hills where you're just kind of like driving along or we're like walking along and then you're like, Oh, we can't find it. You go back to the guidebook.
And then there's a sentence in there that catches your eye.
Chris Bolhuis: when I think of that, I think of the Minicata formation in the Black Hills that, we weren't looking for that. We were, but then we, we found it to be a striking rock
formation actually.
And, and so we did some collecting with it. Yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:00] No, that's a good example. So there's always, There's always something interesting about most rocks and, but, but walking over them just with a singular focus can kind of be, you kind of have to, but it can also be, you can also miss stuff with it.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I'm actually just right now beginning to introduce rocks and the rock cycle
to my young freshman earth science students. And, so I'm trying just to get it across the board, like just take a swipe at it. Like, why, why is this important? And you, you start [00:18:30] to think about the, the amount of information that you can get from a rock that you have in your hand.
if you can pick that rock up and you can classify it as, are you, You know, sedimentary. Are you igneous? Are you metamorphic? And once you can like get to that point, then the information that you can get just from 10 seconds of holding it in your hand is, is actually
amazing. The story that that rock has to
tell, you know? so that's where I'm at right now. I'm trying to convince my students that I am not a total nut job [00:19:00] and that this is
actually awesome
stuff. So, uh, well, it's a, it's a work in
progress. I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you can update us next week.
Yeah. you can update us over the next couple weeks, whether you've,
Chris Bolhuis: Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I, it's hard to lie to high schoolers. They're pretty good at picking up on your lies.
Oh, you think you're normal?
Chris Bolhuis: I do. Yeah. I'm not lying to them.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, yeah, yeah, you're really normal, Chris.
Oh my goodness.
Chris Bolhuis: All right. Point,
taken.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: point [00:19:30] taken.
Chris Bolhuis: Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: now that I, now that I got the planet geo hat on,
I think it's
time to, yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: I was going to ask you
why you're not wearing the hat. I still don't
have
Dr. Jesse Reimink: know. I'll, uh,
there might,
Chris Bolhuis: I, have to, no, no, no, no. I can just get on, I can just get on the website and
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Plantgeocast. com.
It's on there. Yeah. You
can order one yourself. There you go.
so
yeah, there, yeah, that's right. You gotta have one hanging on the tractor and, uh,
one down in the recording booth.
Oh, [00:20:00] yes. I can't wait. You got to get a photo for me of Joyce
sleeping when you rock up on a Friday with the Planet Geo hat on, you know, like
visor down, governor eyes on the
porch, you know? yeah.
that'd be great. That'd be the best.
Chris Bolhuis: It's it's on its
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Got the Planet Geo hat on now. Um, Okay. So
Chris, you want to hear about the second half of this geological sampling, thing that we wrote that is
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, absolutely. So this is a part of your
review then, right?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: this is, a
part of the review, and this is the [00:20:30] part that's like the how big of a sample do you need part, so the backstory here is again, Something I did wrong, I think, my PhD supervisor, Tom Chacko, who's a great scientist, just an overall amazing human being.
I asked him to, to help write this review chapter with me and he wanted to do a test. of the statistics of geochemical sampling. And what I mean by that is there's a whole bunch of, literature. Well, there's some literature out there on, if [00:21:00] you think Chris of the Gore mountain amphibolite, or pick your average granite, a granite is a coarse grained rock, right? It has grain sizes. You can see there's some randomness. To sampling a granite. So if you take a big granite you want to get an average and you can't collect a hundred kilogram sample that goes in the back Of Chris's truck, if you just can't collect that big of a sample, you need something in your backpack, you collect a small fist size sample, and you're going to get a random number [00:21:30] of quartz grains and a random number of feldspar grains.
it's going to be a random assortment of grains that you hope is pretty close to the, If you collect a tiny thumb sized sample, and then measure the geochemistry of that, you might randomly get too many quartz grains in there, or too few feldspars, and you might get a weird composition that's not an average of the rock.
does that like lead in make sense?
Chris Bolhuis: right. So this actually does make your title make sense. How, how big of a sample do I need to get a representative cross [00:22:00] section of what's in
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly representative. That's a great, that's the perfect word for it. representative, you can imagine a basalt. A basalt where it's very, very fine grain. You can collect
a pretty small sample and our intuition tells us like, they're probably gonna be pretty close.
There's been a, a lot of work on trying to quantify this or to provide kind of a guide For how big of a sample you need, depending on the rock you're sampling. And all those people who did these models, it was all sort of geostatisticians. And a lot of it came out of the exploration [00:22:30] community. Cause you can imagine somebody out there looking for gold deposit really should know how big of a sample you need to know whether there's gold or not, like whether to make that, determination.
So the exploration
geologists
Chris Bolhuis: So this.
was a study that, your supervising professor, Tom Chacko
did then he, actually broke
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, he, wanted to do this. he said, there's all this statistical literature, but nobody's actually tested it with a granite. And I said,
no,
that's, that sounds really boring. I don't want to do that. So if, if you want to do it, you can do it, you can pay
for it.
Chris Bolhuis: I [00:23:00] look at this and I, I don't think it sounds boring.
I, um, I disagree with you.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah,
you're right, Chris, you, it's good that you disagreed with me because I, was wrong.
This is not boring at all.
So, so what Tom did is he went to the, granite countertop store and found a big off cut piece of a granite countertop. It's a K Feldspar, what we call K Feldspar megachristic. um, we've talked about this with the
Sierra Nevadas, like it has big K Feldspar grains in it And then, quartz, biotite, you know, all the other
Chris Bolhuis: And then, so the, the [00:23:30] megachrysts, the megachrysts are, are they surrounded by smaller
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes. So it's like big floating.
Chris Bolhuis: going to have, and yeah, you're going to have variability
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly. A lot. so he got this rock from the granite countertop store. Uh, it's called Sapphire Brown is the trade name, but it is a, it's actually
a granite. Yeah,
I know. Right. Um, It's so he took it. He took this huge slab, took it back, and he broke it apart into a bunch of different size pieces.
Like you took one kilogram size and did that five times, took [00:24:00] 51 kilogram samples, took
52 kilogram, etc. A bunch of different sizes of samples did it five times and then. sent all those to the lab and said, measure the geochemistry of all these different sizes for me. So what we get now is sample size versus the variability because we have five replicates so we can see how scattered the silica concentration or the potassium concentration is in those five kind of replicates of each size because they should all be the same if it's a really good average and [00:24:30] what you see is the small samples like a half a kilogram sample, like a one pound sample there's a lot of variability.
Because the K Feldspar grains are quite big. So anyway, we did this thing. Well, we, I can claim we now because Tom really did it. And it turns out it was amazingly interesting because all the statistics that people had done before were wrong. And, Tom tested this, really did a test of how good are
the statistics, and the statistics were wrong, because they didn't really account for this [00:25:00] thing we call closure in geochemistry, where when you grab a sample of a rock, you have 100 percent of the minerals in that sample.
You always have to think in terms
of 100%, so that's what we call closure.
Chris Bolhuis: So what was the size where when you went above a certain size, then it all evened out.
What was that? What essentially
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's extremely dependent upon the rock that you have in front of you. So What we ended up doing is redoing the model, redoing the statistical model with method we call Monte Carlo [00:25:30] simulations. And we have talked about Monte Carlo. This is going back a couple years ago, but basically you just do random simulations 1000 10, 000 times.
what we did is we built upon this earlier statistical work and, and you could build a synthetic rock. So now we have a little program that? says, okay, Chris, What minerals are in your rock? What's the composition? So, do you have K Feldspar quartz, biotite, amphibole? Okay. You've got those minerals.
Uh, What are the grain sizes and how much of those minerals are in the rock? So you put that into your model and then you can [00:26:00] spit out. a sample
size that
you might want that would give you a certain,
variability on your potassium content or something.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, what about the variability within the rock in terms of, you know,
grain size, texture, what a porphyritic rock is? That's another
wrinkle in, in the,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So at the moment, it's a, it's a, it is the question, right? Our model gets
close, but not perfect to reality because we
did this reality test. and the modeling that gets close, but not perfect because of exactly what you're describing, like not every [00:26:30] K Feldspar grain is one centimeter by two centimeters by one centimeter or whatever.
Right.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So can we get
to, I'm excited
here.
Can we get to the end? Can we get to the number? What is the number for the rock
that like the, the megacryst,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, so if you're walking across the Sierra Nevadas, the big K Feldspar megacrystic, that you see the big
K Feldspar megacryst, you have to collect about a 20 kilogram sample
to get,
Chris Bolhuis: Oh, oh my gosh. Okay.
That I did not
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's shocking,
right,
because [00:27:00]
Chris Bolhuis: like a 42 pound
rock.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: because the K feldspars, They're, like 10 centimeters.
Those
things are, huge suckers, right? Like,
Chris Bolhuis: they're, they're the size of a
Dr. Jesse Reimink: if, you want to get a potassium content, that's plus or minus 1%. So the potassium in that
rock is like 6 percent of the rock matter. Maybe that's too high. 4 or 5 percent of the rock is potassium. If you want to get plus or minus 1%, you have to collect like a 20 to 25 kilogram sample, a huge sample, massive.
Chris Bolhuis: okay. That's
amazing. What about, um, just a, a regular [00:27:30] granite, not a
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it, it, it goes down substantially into the couple kilogram range, depending again
on, on your size. So it's heavily weighted towards these big grain size, the big,
Chris Bolhuis: you do one for, say, basalt?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: basalt's very small. You can do 500 grams. I mean,
Chris Bolhuis: Oh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: if it, even if it has small porphyrblasts, like if it has sort of phenocryst,
olivine phenocryst, just because the background rock is so small.
The grain size is so small, you can collect a pretty small one [00:28:00] a small
sample, and it's, pretty accurate. So, We talked about the Gore Mountain Garnet, we put the Gore Mountain Garnet, we
didn't test this empirically, like we didn't sub sample the Gore Mountain Garnet, but we put it into our model, and it says that you need like an 80 kilogram sample to
get, yeah, we
need to crush, we need to crush the entire thing,
Chris Bolhuis: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and then we'd get a, an iron concentration that is basically You know, plus or minus 1 percent iron, on the, on the [00:28:30] value.
So, So, this, this was interesting for two things. First of all, like the statistics were wrong and I think it's important for, really important for exploration geologists. People like
going after lithium pegmatites, for instance. I mean, when you have spodumene crystals the size of your house, You are so, like, subject to this random sampling, so
much. Um, but I will also collect bigger samples of my, of my gneisses the rocks I collect in the
field.
Chris Bolhuis: that's my next question actually.
so,
you deal with the Acosta Nice up in the
Northwest territories. This is a [00:29:00] really complicated
rock. So if you put something like that into your model, how big of a, how much do you have to
Dr. Jesse Reimink: You, you, it needs to be in the kind of the granite size, like a kilo, a couple of kilograms probably, but what that
means. So I, my normal sampling routine up until now was typically you try and take?
like a, A two fifths size samples, what we would call it. Um, you know, so put your two fifths together and that's kind of the broadly the size you want.
And that's great. that's kind of the size we need, but what I would always do is I take that back to the lab. I'd [00:29:30] cut it in half. And half would just go in an archive. They would say, I'm saving that for later. This was a really expensive rock to collect. I'm going to save that for later. Cause I don't know what I might need it for.
And then I deal with a one fist size sample and I'd crush that up and I would. separate some of it and leave the crushed bit for later. So I'd end up only really analyzing less than I need to, like less than the one or two kilograms. So really what I need to
do is either crush full sample, the full [00:30:00] fist size sample,
or I need to collect a doubly big one, you know, two,
Chris Bolhuis: A bigger sample.
So that you can do what you're processed. Yes.
Yeah.
Well, to me that makes sense, but it is expensive,
especially if you're on a float plane, you have to be leery of
weight and all those
things, weight and
Dr. Jesse Reimink: suddenly you're collecting more samples, but you're already up there. so what we did this past summer was we collected big samples because we had the
space and time and we were already up there.
Chris Bolhuis: do you ever get to collect just, uh, like, all right, I'm going to collect this for scientific purposes, but [00:30:30] this is too awesome of a rock. I need to have one too. Do you ever get to do
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I, I, uh, not for, well, it says we could have this conversation with Mike, like Mike Ackerson is not?
allowed to have a personal collection actually, as a museum curator at the Smithsonian,
because
You can imagine, like, if you're, um, Gabby Farfan.
who we interviewed, if she's a gem collector, she's going off and saying, I have a million dollars to buy a diamond from here and I'll buy it from you if you give me that little one by the side for my own personal collection for free, or, you know, you, you,
[00:31:00] could imagine people
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Gabby doesn't and would never,
but that's why these rules are in place for people like Mike.
Chris Bolhuis: so does that mean that Mike can't have the kind of stuff that I have in my front yard around
my flower gardens and so on? Like you couldn't have that?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Technically, he's not allowed, yeah, to have
that kind of
a collection, I think. for me, I do take some samples that are quote unquote, Personal, but they're usually not for my yard. Like I don't have any in my yard that I collected with research
money.
They'll sit in my [00:31:30] office and I'll usually have them because they're great teaching ones. Like usually those spectacular ones are
great teaching tools and you can take them into my intro level class. I bring in a beautiful Acosta nice sample that I haven't cut at all because I want to bring it in and say, look, this is the oldest rock in the world.
Look how pretty it is. holding your hands, you
know, do the ooh and ah over it. So. I do stuff like that, and I have given out, what I have taken is, is like a kind of a grab bag of little chips of the old rocks, still [00:32:00] have a bucket sitting in my office, and I'll take those when I give talks, like public science talks, and usually if, if somebody comes up afterwards or asks a couple really good questions, and are clearly interested, I'll, I'll give them a piece, I mean, I had one that?
I cut into a little coaster, it was a
four billion year old rock, and I was giving a talk here at a local distillery, and And, uh, a guy came up to me, was super interested, asking a lot of questions, like, just really enthused about
old rocks.
He had a rock collection at home, he brought his wife up and introduced his wife to me and stuff, and, and so I gave [00:32:30] him one. And I gave him this piece and said, Yeah.
here's a piece of the oldest rock in the world. it's a coaster,
and it's yours if you promise to use it. And he looked at me, and he He almost got like teary eyed.
he was like So appreciative. so I do like stuff like that where people for me. It's it's I'm using research funds to do that, but it's It's clearly inspiring other people, right? It's clearly like for outreach purposes. It's not for
me to have cool rocks in my house or something, I guess, if
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Okay. I [00:33:00] know. I get, I get it. Yeah. That's really interesting. I, similar experience just last week. you know, we're doing mineral identification and, uh, with my freshman earth science and a kid just kept commenting that, and I, he's just a really neat person. He's very, out there and enthusiastic and he just loves amethyst.
And so I just, you know, walked back and grabbed some of my own personal amethyst stuff, you know, and I gave him a, like a, it was a chunk of a
geode, you know, that I gave him and he was the same thing, just blown away. Like, Oh, Oh, [00:33:30] what? You're giving this to me? Yes.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, it's so cool. it's
cool to be able to do that. And I think inspire the next generation really, or inspire people, even if they don't go into geology, like this kid, even if he doesn't become a geologist, he's always going to have that passion in his brain. He's always going to have that amethyst crystal somewhere, right?
I mean, and, it, it might be the seed to an entire career, or it might just be somebody who continues to appreciate our earth in the way that he remembers Chris Bolhuis teaching them, which is, you know,
Great. Either way. So I have one question for you to end on here, [00:34:00] Chris. and this is well, it's partially related to this geological sampling chapter we talked about, but this is a big issue that Mike Akerson deals with all the time being at the Smithsonian and every university out there deals with because I, over my career, over my career thus far have collected a ton of, I mean, tons, tons, literally tons of samples.
I have probably a hundred five gallon buckets full of research samples that are sitting and the university has to figure out how to deal with these sample collections and where do they, go and what do they do with it? So have you [00:34:30] thought, you're a lot closer to retirement than I am, have you thought about what is going to happen to all of the, the classroom rocks?
Your personal ones are staying in your yard, but ones in the classroom, what's going to happen to, those? Have you? Do you have a plan in place for You're kind of teaching archive or
collection. What's going to happen?
Chris Bolhuis: they, they stay in the
school.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: they stay there and
and somebody else. Is there like another young teacher who will like inherit them or use them or?
Chris Bolhuis: that's a work in
progress still. we had just have a lot of retirements happening right now. I, I [00:35:00] happened to come in at a time where, where we were just hiring massively. and now a lot of those people are, retiring and moving on.
And, and so, yeah, we're replacing those kinds of people. And when, when, when they replaced me, then yeah, I, I hope that somebody will
want them and use them.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's the same with research collections, but like people retire and they don't replace wouldn't have wanted somebody's research collection unless it was very much overlapped with my,
my interest and they usually don't. So Mike at the Smithsonian [00:35:30] gets a lot of requests from retiring professors to say, will you take my collection into the Smithsonian collections?
Cause the university is going to throw it away because they don't have a space to
deal with it and nobody wants it.
So, and we just dealt with this. There's an amazing mineral collection, ore deposits mineral collection from crazy places. In the former USSR that nobody gets to anymore and,
it's all here at Penn State and, we're trying to figure out what to do with it.
So sample archiving is like a whole nother field. what do you do with these [00:36:00] samples that cost 50 grand to get And now they're sitting there. and, and, for various reasons they ended up not being worked on and, but we still want to hang on to them because they have value. So it's a whole
Chris Bolhuis: mean, with, with, my collection, you know, it also just adds to the aesthetic of the
room. I mean, you walk in there and it's a, it's an earth science room. You can just
feel it. And so even if they aren't going to be used in the ways that I use them, that still adds to the whole
atmosphere [00:36:30] of the, the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, you're totally right. You're absolutely right.
Chris Bolhuis: it's thousands of samples, you know, literally, and they're all
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And they're pretty and they're minerals they're, sort of a made an amazing archive. I mean, I'm
gonna,
my PhD supervisor, Tom Chacko, he's, he's not too far away from retiring and he's, we've had this conversation. He's like, I want you to have, if you're willing, I want you to take
all my Acosta samples because the University of Alberta is going to dump them.
And there are a lot,
I collected my PhD, there are a lot that he collected before and after.
But it's also like, I gotta figure out what to do with them, where to put [00:37:00] them, are we gonna do work on them, like, make use of it, so It's not. just taking up space, like, it's a, it's not easy to deal, it's not an easy.
Chris Bolhuis: No, you're
right. It's not.
I'm at that point. I am running out of room.
Because I'm still collecting, you know, and
every time I do something that, it comes from a different location,
I go through the same
Dr. Jesse Reimink: are you
Chris Bolhuis: you
know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: given That you're, you're, you're running out of space? I mean, and you're kind of well, you're past retirement age. Um, [00:37:30] I
can say that
for teachers, right? You're past
Chris Bolhuis: That is
not true.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: 30,
are you past 30 years?
Chris Bolhuis: no,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, close. Okay. All right. Fair enough. But, uh, But I mean, do you find yourself more, I don't know what the right word is gracious with your samples, like giving them away more and, and just
Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely. A hundred percent. Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: love for you to have
Chris Bolhuis: But when, when you have a student, let's say a geology student, who's a junior or senior, and it's just really, really
fired up about [00:38:00] everything that you're doing, and then they express an interest in something and I'm like, well, wait a minute, you know, I have two of that.
I don't need that. give it
away, give it to that person because that just act of kindness or, or just, uh, I don't know what to call it really, but it can be a spark for
that person that you don't know where that influence starts and you don't know where it
Dr. Jesse Reimink: totally, and but people, I think I always think of it as kind of like a sort of returning the favor, right. I mean, it was
that was done [00:38:30] to me at a young age.
And now you and I are in a position to do that a lot it might have a big impact. It might have a little impact. It might have no impact, but the big impact ones are the, you know, make it worth everything else.
I mean,
like the, that might be the seed to an entire career. I mean, my PhD supervisor has a rock, a quartz crystal that was the seed to his career. And. I kind of have the
same thing with one
rock. I've got it in the shelf. Like it's a rock that is for whatever reason it wasn't given to me.
I [00:39:00] found it, but it
was the same kind of thing. Right. so, you never know. It's a, It's a cool
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. It's funny. Cause sometimes they want to pay for it. They're like, well, here, I have some money. And I'm like, Oh, put your, put your bill, Voldemort, put your
Dr. Jesse Reimink: What are you doing? What are you doing?
Chris Bolhuis: a gift.
I want you to have this.
You
know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: completely, but also hi grandpa. did. you just, call it a billfold?
Chris Bolhuis: I,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That was great. I
Chris Bolhuis: did. Oh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: up to the podcast with me today. [00:39:30] That was good.
That was a good
one.
You're we're, we're, we're getting in this.
We're getting in this old mindset though. I mean, it is, you kind of get like, uh, I don't know if it's sappy, but you kind of look back and you think, I mean, I've done this when we just moved, we moved all over the rocks and stuff you kind of get sentimental, like looking back and be like, look at all these rocks I have.
first of
all, it's amazing. There's amazing. stories to all of them. Second of all, I might have too many. Like I, You know, I can get rid of some and that's okay if they're, if they're gone [00:40:00] to the right. purpose. I'm no longer
in like the hoarding phase where it's like, I want to have
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, right. Exactly. You know, I went through a little bit of what you're talking about just the other day, because the way that I go about, you know, Introducing why I am as nuts as I am about rocks is I take four or five rocks that are in my collection back in my lab and I bring them up to the front.
I set them on a table and I tell the story of them, you know, so I'll take like some, lightning strike, obsidian, [00:40:30] some porphyritic andesite from violent volcanic eruptions, all this kind of really cool stuff. And I'll tell the story about those rocks. And when I'm trying to pick four or five, Jesse is a very
difficult task. how do I pick. My four favorite children,
you know, and, and tell their
story to it's, but also as you're doing this, you're going down memory lane every single time you look at these rocks and say, well, I remember where I got that. And I remember who I was with and what I was doing and how old I [00:41:00] was when I
it's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. Chris, hold
on.
Chris Bolhuis: it's a, trip down
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's an amazing story and I want to hit pause on that because this is a podcast episode. I want you to bring those five rocks home. You're going to tell the
story of each of those rocks. We're going to hit record and I'm going to, I'm going to listen.
I'm gonna ask questions. And I think that's really cool way to introduce why you're a rock nerd and anybody listening to this, who's listened to more than one episode knows that already, but, in a more detailed, intimate way, I think that's really important. So, all right, well, let's
do that. Okay.
Bring them home. If you're done with them,
bring [00:41:30] them home and we'll do. it.
Chris Bolhuis: I'll be done with them tomorrow,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: perfect. Bring them home and we'll, we'll record one here in the next couple of
Chris Bolhuis: Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: All right. Cool. well, Hey, we, uh, we stayed out of the weeds. is this
something you would be interested in reading?
Chris Bolhuis: this was fun. Yeah. I want you to send me the link. Yeah, for
sure.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, it's, uh, that's what the goal was, but I'm sure there's a bunch when these, these big vague titles, it's hard to know what to, what,
Chris Bolhuis: I
know, but that's also
the beauty in it too, is, is, you're not given a lot of direction [00:42:00] in this, just, Hey, write a chapter on
this and you get to take it pretty much wherever you want. And your take on it It's unique and it's something that a lot of people, nobody would think of that take outside of the research world.
So I think it's very interesting. I actually do. I, I, this, I really, really enjoyed doing this
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, good. Thanks. Well, you know what I'm excited for Chris is going in geological sampling with you. again. You're coming to Pennsylvania
sometime here this fall. We'll
Chris Bolhuis: that's right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: some geological sampling. I got a couple, a couple of
good hikes and locations we can go check out.
Chris Bolhuis: We'll [00:42:30] do some smash and
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Some smashing crap.
We'll sit there and agonize over how big of a sample we can actually carry down the mountain in our backpacks.
Chris Bolhuis: Well, we've, we've done
that many a
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. We'll have to go do it again. Cool. Hey, that's a wrap. If you want to support us, there's many ways to do that You can buy some of our merch.
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Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Peace. [00:43:30]
