Question: What was your favorite experiment that you have done?

Marie Busfield answered on 12 Jan 2021:

I would describe myself as a field-based geologist, so most of my scientific exploration is out in the natural world, looking at rocks, landforms and landscapes and trying to understand how they form. So I don’t do ‘traditional’ lab-based experiments. I guess the closest I have come is collecting samples of rocks in the field to bring home, slice into very thin layers, and mount on a piece of glass to look at under a microscope. You never know what you’ll see, so it’s always a bit experimental to see what these samples will reveal. My favourite was from rocks that looked pretty boring in the field in Namibia, but when we sliced them open and looked under a microscope we saw really delicate shapes and structures, and some beautiful bright blue, orange and red colours where the minerals had aligned parallel to each other. These colours and shapes were the product of ice from 700 million years ago flowing over the top of these sediments, and squeezing and stretching them as it slid over.