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Welcome to Earth on the Rocks, a show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. Each episode will highlight a new scientist in the earth and atmospheric sciences to learn more about their journey, what interests them, and who they are outside of their science.
Host: Shelby Rader
Producer: Cari Metz
Artwork: Connor Leimgruber
Board Operator: Kate Crum, Betsy Leija
Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR-2422824.
Hi folks, and welcome back to Earth on the Rocks, the show where we get to know the person behind the science. I'm your host, Shelby Rader, and joining us today is Doctor. Peter Sauer. Peter, thanks for coming on the show.
Peter:Thanks for having me, Shelby. It's a pleasure to be here.
Shelby:So Peter, we're getting to know you today over drinks. So what would be either your drink of choice and or a drink of non choice that you would not want to have again?
Peter:Well, I can think of all kinds that fit the latter. Yeah. But for the first one, you know, I used to go out a lot for drinks and have wine or beer, and there's a number of them that I could really enjoy. But I stopped drinking alcohol a while back, and now I'm really into coffee. There are so many different kinds of coffee.
Peter:And if you see me around the building, you will know that I enjoy my coffee. My only issue with it is that there's so many to try, so many flavors, and coffee is best in moderation. And so that's my dilemma. But there's a lot of good coffees and I like finding out the ones that are special to somebody from a particular part of the world or in a particular way of brewing and it opens up a lot of conversation and then I do like the flavor.
Shelby:Are there any Bloomington spots that are favorites of yours?
Peter:For Bloomington spots, I like the small cafes that are local and Need More Cafe has a lot of good memories for me as does Soma. Those are the two that I like best.
Shelby:Yeah, both of those are really good options.
Peter:And then another place that I go out often is to the Runcible Spoon, which the coffee is fine. I wouldn't say I go there for the coffee, in particular, but the company and the coffee together makes really good.
Shelby:I'm a big fan of the Runcible Spoon, especially in the summer. So I love Bloomington, but one of my sort of pet peeves about it is I think there needs to be more places that have nice outdoor seating. There's sort of limited patio access. It's helped now that they've closed Kirkwood off during parts of the year, but I think Rent Able Spoon has a nice patio when the flowers are in bloom.
Peter:Absolutely. Yep.
Shelby:Are there any drinks of non choice that you would want to share?
Peter:Non choice drinks. I actually don't think I have any that I could particularly name
Shelby:right Yeah, that's totally fine. So you're part of the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department here. If someone were to ask you what sort of scientist are you or how would you classify yourself, What would be your response?
Peter:The way I describe myself is I'm a geochemist and in particular looking at low temperature geochemistry. The majority of what I do has to do with either organic chemistry or stable isotope chemistry. And the reason I like to focus on that is it ties into so many earth processes near the surface where we live. And in particular, a lot of the things that I like to think about involve life. So life and the geological part of the world that is supporting life and supporting people is all kind of in the area that I focus on.
Shelby:And so when you say low temperature, I think people might have wildly different ideas of what that means. And so can you elaborate a little bit on that? Sort of like, what are the thresholds for low temperature geochemistry? Because a lot of times people will get that of question, Oh, are you a low temperature or high temperature geochemist? And so what's the difference or distinction there?
Peter:That is a great point and a great question. Yeah, so low temperature in the way that I think about it means in the temperature range where life can exist, so when water is liquid and before you get too deep into the crust where they're too hot for life, they're more like how mountains are built and lava is formed. That's high temperature. That's not what I do so much, but in terms of numbers, hydrothermal vents are about as hot as I get, and the ice at the poles is about as cold as I get. So in between is where I like to think about.
Shelby:And then you also mentioned that you're sort of a stable isotope geochemist, and so what sorts of isotopic systems are you interested in or investigating?
Peter:The ones that I'm spending the most time on these days have to do, again, with the remains that life has left on either fossil or archaeological remains. And I'm looking at the materials that are left behind that tell us something about how organisms lived or people made use of the land. So the types of materials, a lot of my work right now is dealing with the bones and stone and clay artifacts that are from archaeological sites or from relatively young fossil sites. We're looking at ivory right now that has chemical traces of where the animal lived. And so we can use the chemistry of the bone or the tooth or the skin remains that can relate to where the organism lived, maybe what it ate, whether it was healthy or not.
Peter:There's a lot of projects that are involved in that. And then there's other projects that look at materials that are preserved in sedimentary settings such as lakes and oceans. And there, the organic materials are produced by living things, whether it's bacteria or plants or algae. They get preserved in the sediment. And by going back through the sediment deeper and deeper, we can tell something about the history of the area, whether it's the climate history, whether it's the biological history, whether it's something about human use of the land, or whether it's climate.
Peter:All of those can be addressed through measuring the chemistry, both the organic chemistry and the isotope chemistry, and then looking at that proxy of environmental conditions and comparing it to a lot of other things we know about the area.
Shelby:I'm gonna be very biased because I would also classify myself as a geochemist, but I think that's one of the really intriguing things about isotope geochemistry is that you can have all these various puzzle pieces from different data sets that can tell you different things about some of the topics you just mentioned, the climate of the area, migration pathways, diets. There's all sorts of information that we can gather from using some of these isotopic systems on, you know, animal or human remains, on archaeological samples, on environmental samples. And I think that's so impressive that we're even able to do that, much less apply it in sort of the broad ways that you and others in the field sort of apply these tools to understand these sorts of things. So I think it's a really exciting field to be a part of, and it feels like aspects of it are evolving all the time where we're finding new applications or we're getting higher quality data as instruments improve. And so the things that we can do with some of these systems feels like it's still continuing to grow, and I think that's an exciting place to be right now.
Peter:Absolutely, absolutely. And I think one of the things you just mentioned hits on an important part for me in terms of the way I think about my role as a geochemist, which is that the tools I bring to a problem are highly technical and they take a lot of time in the lab to get the sample from the point of actually collecting it to the place where we have the analysis that we can say something about the history of that sample. And none of that can be done without a lot of contextual information about where the sample came from, not only where it fits into the ecosystem or the historical past of this particular object or environment, but also just why do you care about these things? So the ivory project that I'm working on right now is a perfect example where we've known for a while that the chemistry of teeth and bones reflects the climate and reflects the life conditions that the organism had when it was growing. But why do we care about ivory in particular?
Peter:Well, in the case of the project that I'm working on with Jonathan Schlesinger and Ryan Kennedy here at IU, we're interested in some historical specimens of ivory that were carved over the last few hundred years. And they were collected in various places, whether it's in The US, whether it's in China, whether it's in other parts of Southeast Asia, where the historical record of where the ivory was obtained to make these carvings is not complete. We don't really know where it came from, but we have lots of the specimens. So if you want to figure out, well, where was this ivory trade taking place? Where were the source of the animals that provided it, that ended up being carved in some place like Japan or the Western Side Of The US or places in China?
Peter:The chemistry tells you something about it. It constrains, was it an African source, was it an Indian source, was it somewhere else in Southeast Asia? And by piecing together the timeline of when the different resources were used, you can tie that into trade practices and other kinds of historical developments that was never written down, but it's clues that really help piece together the history of ivory in this case, but it could apply to almost anything where trade in international organisms would be of interest.
Shelby:Yeah, that I think is such an interesting aspect that I just sort of want to highlight again some of the things you said. You all are able to take ivory that has now been found in places that we know it didn't originate, and it's ivory that's been carved. So through some of these geochemical analyses, you can actually have a a fairly good idea of where the animal that originally produced that ivory was living at the time of the production of that ivory, and then track that through how it got traded and moved around to where it ultimately ended up in a place for you all to sample. And that's pretty crazy that you can do that. That's really impressive.
Shelby:And one of my sort of favorite applications of some of this work was doing similar things, but with human remains where you can use some of these same analytical techniques in tooth enamel or dentin in different bones that are developing over different periods of life to understand the life trajectory of an individual. And so there's a paper that I always share in one of the classes that I teach where there was a former king of England who was never expected to be king, and so there was very little record of his early life. But then sort of unexpectedly, enough of the hierarchy above him passed away that he unceremoniously became king. And so then there was this really detailed record of his life. He passed away.
Shelby:He ended up being buried in a location that ultimately turned into a parking lot, which is sort of a sad reflection of of how things change. And when his remains were exhumed, they wanted to be able to certify or say with some level of confidence that this was this individual who was a king. And so they could use some of these same analyses that you're describing to say, well, here's what his diet likely was and where he likely lived during the last five to ten years of his life versus here's what we think his diet may have been and where he likely lived in the very early years of his childhood. And so we can first confirm that this was this individual, but then also make some assumptions about this period of his life where there was very little record. And so it's, yeah, the applications of some of these systems are are really unique and really interesting, and you can sort of build this chain from the data that you collect to these really valuable interpretations.
Shelby:And so I think a lot of the work that you do is interesting to me because it follows that same line of thought, but also is interdisciplinary and is collaborative. I think that's an aspect of geochemistry that's a really fun part of the field.
Peter:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that story of the royalty of England, I was paying attention when that came out because I have been very close to that parking lot. That was long before they excavated it and found him. But yeah, it was a fascinating story.
Peter:There's so many others that I could mention of people who We have the remains, but we don't necessarily know where they came about. There was another project involving a student here at IU who was working on Guatemalan remains, human remains, from the colonial period. And one of the questions that she was interested in doing was figuring out about the social structure of who ended up buried in the late 1700s and a little before that in parts of Guatemala. And she was able to work with people to get the permission to sample some bones that had been dug up and they had all been meshed together, mixed together in such a way that nobody could tell which had went with which other part of the body. And that meant that the antiquities people in Guatemala were able to say, yes, it's alright for you to sample small parts of these to do the chemical analyses and see what the social structure was.
Peter:So the part of that that was interesting to me, I was involved in the chemistry, looking at the aspects of diet that are recorded in bone and tooth collagen and dentin. And Paige Wojciech was the student involved, she was looking at other aspects of the preservation that showed kind of were there signs of nutrient deficiency, was it a well fed individual, Were there any signs of disease? And tie that into the diet, and then be able to speculate about the social structure of how the health of the people who lived so many hundreds of years ago in a place where there aren't a lot of written records relate to where the person lived, whether they migrated into the area, whether they were mostly indigenous, whether they were mixed blood, whether they had come from Europe, and that would have been Spain at the time. And so this is an ongoing project. It hasn't been released yet, but we're getting through the data.
Peter:Again, I would never be able to do all of the project because I don't have the archeological background or the ability and skills that it takes to work out the international collaborations to get the samples. But by working with somebody like Paige, it was really a lot of fun to get involved and do the chemistry in the lab.
Shelby:Yeah, I think that a fun part of science. And also, to me, again I might be biased, I think that's a sign of really good science when you can form these partnerships and recognize, you know, I can provide this expertise to help think very deeply about this project in a very specific way, while other team members can also think very deeply about the project in very different ways. And so you can collectively write this much more detailed story about what's happening than you ever could individually. I think that's part of what excites me about getting to do some of the
Peter:stuff that we get to do. Absolutely.
Shelby:So are there other sort of collaborative projects that have stood out to you that you've been involved in, either for the type of work that you got to do or the project ideas or maybe doing fieldwork related to those sorts of things?
Peter:Well, I've had a lot of luck in getting involved in great projects that go to the field. So one of the main reasons I was interested in geology from the beginning and continued with the kind of work that I do is that I had a lot of opportunities to go to the field. So at graduate school, I was at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and there's an institute that focuses on Arctic and Alpine research. And my focus was all in the Arctic, and I took every opportunity I could to go up and help out on projects, whether they were of my own direction or as part of a team. Most of my work involved coring lake sediments, so we were trying to figure out the climate history of the post glacial period in Canada and in Greenland.
Peter:And at the time, there were some new developments that involved being able to collect cores from deeper lakes and through deeper sediment columns, so going back farther in time. It all involved heavy equipment, and the easiest way to get around was when it was snowy on the ground and you could drag things by sled, and you could walk on the lakes because they were frozen. So you didn't have to worry too much about drifting from one place to another or whether your boat was too heavy because the ice gets so thick up there. So that was my initial graduate school experience.
Shelby:And with that project, when you say post glacial, you mean after glaciers have retreated, and now land is sort of newly exposed, what's happening to the climate in that region? And can you talk a little bit about how lake sediments can tell us that information or help answer some of those questions?
Peter:Yeah, absolutely. So the idea in where we were looking is that we were working in the area where the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which is the big ice sheet that covered all of the Eastern Part of Canada and came down into the Northern United States around Michigan and Iowa and Indiana as well. That ice sheet had expanded to its maximum at something like twenty, twenty five thousand years ago, and then it retreated. And subsequent to that, the climate went through various fluctuations, and one of the questions that had been of interest as well, is there an ice age coming back? We know that there had been previous ice ages.
Peter:So what has climate varied like since the ice sheet left, and will ice ever come back? Do we need to worry about a future ice age? Well, now with climate change due to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, we don't need to worry about ice sheets coming back in Canada anymore. But there's still the question of, well, how sensitive is climate to these various forcings and how much has the variation of just natural climate forcing and causing a response, how much has that affected the environment up there? So we looked at lake sediments, and there were always a team of people involved because when you've gone to the trouble of collecting a core, which usually involves a team of six or eight people, and spending a few weeks up there, you want to get as much science out of it as possible.
Peter:So I looked at the isotope geochemistry and the organic chemistry, but there were people who were specialists in looking at pollen microfossils or diatoms or other types of sediment input that can be related to stream height. So it all depends on the lakes. We would typically core six or eight lakes, and each one of them had a different sensitivity, so we'd be looking for different things with each record. So, again, that kind of team effort where you get to sit around during the downtimes and during the travel times and figure out, well, what's motivating the other people who are working on this project and what are their skills and what is the sensitivity of what they're looking at. The plants growing on the land tell you one thing, but the algae tell you another, and then the chemistry can tell you a third thing.
Peter:And the presence of glacial input or dust input can tell you yet another thing.
Shelby:And so all of these different things you're mentioning that folks were interested in or examining are sort of inputs to this lake setting that ultimately settle to the bottom, sort of form a layer that's representative of a period of time. And then over time, those layers continue to stack on top of each other. So the closer to the bottom of the surface of the lake, the younger, and then the deeper behind that sediment you go, the older that would represent. So when you all are taking these cores, you're literally, you know, pulling up a segment of what's buried under this lake to sort of see how these things are changing over time. Is that sort of an accurate view?
Peter:Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly right.
Shelby:So during this period of time when you were in grad school and you were working in these sort of Arctic regions, And then sort of where did you go after graduate school and what sorts of field experiences did you have?
Peter:Yeah, so after that, the next set of field seasons I went to were during my postdoc time where I was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod in Woods Hole. And that was a place where the focus was much more on marine sediments and going out into the deep ocean, which I never actually worked on a cruise, but I was able again to participate in the science by working on the sediments that had been brought back. So I had some ideas about some new geochemical tracers that I wanted to look at that were really pushing the limit of what could be analytically examined. It had to do with looking at stable isotopes and hydrogen that are preserved in organic compounds. And that was a new technology that was just under development in the nineteen nineties when I was a postdoc.
Peter:The new analytical techniques were just becoming available. And so I was coming from the lake side thinking it would be interesting to look for places to apply these compounds specific, looking at individual compounds that could be sourced back to a particular part of the water column and see if we could learn more about either hydrographic history or climate. And the sediments there that I found most interesting were from the Black Sea, where the Black Sea has a unique setting where it is currently called the Black Sea because when you go down below about 40 meters water depth, it's completely anoxic. There's no oxygen in the water column at all. So if you dip an anchor into that, it's full of reducing compounds, including hydrogen sulfide, so when you pull your anchor back, it's all black.
Peter:That's why it's called the Black Sea. And that causes a preservation of organic compounds and perfusion. There are lots of different candidates that we could look at. But the Black Sea didn't always used to be anoxic in the bottom waters. Back during the glacial maximum when sea level was lower, there was enough water coming off of Eastern Europe and Western Asia that it caused the the water column to get completely fresh and oxygen rich.
Peter:So there's these major changes in the oceanography there that have an effect on both the organic chemistry and then also the stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen are influenced a lot by the water column and its dynamics.
Shelby:Yeah, that's a really interesting setting and a unique setting and sort of like a big shift from this Arctic region to now something that is chemically quite distinct. Then how, sort of from there, how did you end up at IU where you are now?
Peter:Well, as it turns out, the path that took me here to IU went from Colorado to Cape Cod and Woods Hole, and then here to Bloomington. And while I was at Woods Hole, I got married, and Debbie and I were looking for a place where we could both pursue our careers. And we had a season of applying to lots of places and thinking about the pluses and minuses of several options. And Bloomington had a lot to offer that the other places didn't. There was a good job in the Spanish and Portuguese department for Debbie, and it turns out that my postdoc advisor, who was at Woods Hole, had previously been here at IU Bloomington.
Peter:John Hayes was his name, and he had worked as part of a team where there were still members of that team on the IU campus. So when I interviewed here, I was shown labs that were open to me to basically collaborate with and find space in and try to get some projects going in. So that's how I ended up here.
Shelby:And one of the things that always impresses me about you is your skill set and ability to work with instrumentation. And so you've sort of talked off and on during this segment about you know, the analytical improvements and this instrumentation that's used for these analyses. That takes a lot of effort to keep up and to maintain and to troubleshoot. And I think, you know, nowadays, having that skill to be able to work on these quite sophisticated and quite expensive pieces of equipment isn't as prevalent as I feel like it once was, but you're really, really good at it. And so how did you sort of become skilled at that?
Shelby:Was that something you were interested in from the get go when you started working with these isotopic systems, or is it something that at some point you just had to become skilled at because you have to keep these things up and running to be able to collect data for your research? Or how did that evolve?
Peter:Well, thanks. I appreciate that as a compliment. I've always been interested in mechanical things, and I think a lot of it actually goes back to the way I was brought up. My father is a scientist and both of my parents you know, they had, grew up in the 30s where there wasn't a lot of money around and if something broke, you fixed it. And if you didn't know how to fix it, you could often figure out how to fix it by following some basic steps.
Peter:And I paid attention to that. You know, I remember one particular situation when I was about 10 and we were living in France. My father had a sabbatical there, and everywhere he went was by bicycle. And somehow I ended up with a Rally bicycle that had this hub mechanism in the back where there was a three gear shifter system, which I don't know if anyone has seen that, but if you look online, can find exploded diagrams of just how complicated a three gear shifter is. It's all internal to the hub.
Peter:There was that on this bicycle, and then there was also a coaster brake, which is a mechanism also inside the hub where you reverse the pedals and it causes a break to happen inside that hub. And something was going wrong and we took it apart. I should say, my father took it apart because we were trying to fix it. And there were about 500 pieces spread out all over the garage floor. And the question was, how do you put it back together again?
Peter:And I kind of watched him and admired him and then left because I have things to do at age 10. But what I found out was possible by watching what he did was he had written to the manufacturer across the channel in we were in France, that was a manufactured bicycle from England. And they very helpfully sent the instructions, and it was about 20 pages, and you hold it one way and you piece everything together, and then you turn it over, holding very carefully that the pieces don't fall apart, you put in the rest, and then you return it to its original position and finish it up. And that whole idea of, well, you know, just because it's a million pieces on the floor doesn't mean it's not possible to fix. You just have to know how to approach it and where to get help.
Peter:That stuck with me. And that was kind of the beginning, going on through the development of my career, I found out that there really is nothing that's all that complicated in the sense that math or the physics is hard. It just takes a while to figure it out. And in my case, what's been really valuable is knowing who to ask for help. Because if you stick with it and you have, whether it's an electronics problem or a mechanical pump problem, there is a solution.
Peter:And sometimes the solution is to buy a new part, but oftentimes it's something that can be serviced if you find out exactly how to do it and get some help.
Shelby:I'm sure I've talked about this on the show before, but to me, so much of our work sort of in higher education has such a slow time scale for feeling a tangible return on all this effort. You know, like research projects, I think sometimes folks, especially new incoming students, feel like things happen very quickly. And oftentimes from the onset of an idea, oh, I think this would be something that would be interesting to try to probe further, or this is a question I wanna try to answer, to when you have a paper that's published or a presentation you give, sometimes that's years. And so even in that process, you know, the final results aren't necessarily incredibly tangible. Like, yes, you write a paper, but you don't get physical copies of that anymore.
Shelby:You know, maybe you have a dataset, but it's on a spreadsheet. And so I've always enjoyed the aspect of troubleshooting those sorts of instrument based things because you can feel that you're making progress and you can see how things are falling apart or coming together. And so it's more of not necessarily an immediate, but a little shorter timescale feedback than a lot of the work that we do. And so I think having that aspect of it is really satisfying sometimes to take a break from some of the computer based heavy thinking work, to be able to use your hands and take something apart and try to put it back together and see if it works. Probably it doesn't, so you have to take it apart again and put it back together.
Shelby:And so I think that aspect is sort of reassuring and can be a nice experience to have in the midst of, you know, all the other things that we often are juggling.
Peter:Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think there's all kinds of personalities and there are all kinds of problems that need solving. And what you're talking about in terms of finding satisfaction in the range of projects and timelines and overall significance, all of that matters. I think getting the right balance is really important for whoever wants to go into science or go into technological or support roles, because they're all important, but different mindsets find it easy to focus on big picture only or sometimes mechanical only or sometimes details. And so I think it's really important for me to remember what I'm good at, remember what I like to think about, remember where I have more trouble, kinda keeping my mind on task, and then developing my way of thinking and my kind of role in terms of the contributions I can have where everyone brings their own skill set.
Peter:And being a team member is what's really important to me for exactly those reasons.
Shelby:Yeah. So another thing that you're very skilled at that also impresses me is outside of sort of the instrument related things, just sort of like broad electronics and things of that sort of broad framework. So for example, I had a student who did a greenhouse trial, a growth experiment where we potted plants and watched them grow over several months. And you helped her and really led putting together this small computer with a camera to record over different time scales, take snapshots sort of of the plant growth. And so now she's been able to have the short video that shows the progressive plant growth over several months.
Shelby:And it's a really, really fun part of her project and a really useful way to be able to communicate with people sort of this what oftentimes feels nebulous. Oh, we grew some plants and this is what happened. And so watching you sort of get all these individual components together and set them up and program them in a way that it was collecting these sorts of snapshots at a frequency that you wanted, I'd love to see that experience. So were those sorts of things sort of feed offs from your interest in instrumentation, and so this is a different way to use those skills, or are those just things that you would consider sort of hobbies now that you use for fun?
Peter:Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's a little of each. So the skills that went into making that possible, this was a time lapse camera system which is based on a Raspberry Pi and components you can get that really don't cost that much. The reason I got interested in that kind of project was that I saw in my graduate school experience, but also since then, I saw people who were able to put together components of mechanical and scientific equipment where it was just like an erector set, where you assemble things and then there's a microcomputer control. And by learning how to interface one with the other, you can make something that really helped generate data, whether it's sample handling, whether it's taking pictures, whether it's setting up something where in the field you don't have to be there to do the observations.
Peter:And I saw a number of people working on projects like that back in my grad school days, and I always admired what they were able to do with it. And really, since then, it's become a lot easier. There's a whole maker movement out there, and the maker movement is using Raspberry Pis, using these sensors, using open source software, and it's allowing people who just have an interest and they don't even have to have a high budget to be able to make scientific observations or, you know, whatever's of interest to them, they can they can do. I find that fascinating for many reasons. One is it's a it's an intellectual challenge.
Peter:What What do you want to do? How do you want to do it? And how do you make the pieces fit together? There's a lot of resources out there. You can learn what you need to from YouTube.
Peter:You really can. And there's specialist maker websites that have lots of examples of here's what I did, and here's what you could do if you wanted to. And it comes from that level of interest. The other part that I just support philosophically is the democratization of science and technology through the do it yourself movement. And this falls right into that.
Peter:There are people who make it a lot of fun to do this. I know who to call, I know who to go to, and there are fairs, Maker Fest fairs, where you can go and meet people who've done things you've never thought of. And it's just a matter of kind of taking that motivation and having a reason to do something, and the project that was involving the greenhouse and the cameras and the environmental centers was right up that alley. It was a lot of fun.
Shelby:Yeah. One of the aspects of that that I really appreciate is those sorts of things, like these maker systems that you're describing, to me, they make science a lot more accessible. I think a lot of times folks have this idea that science is only or should be meant to only be accessible to a certain group of people that are at certain institutions or have certain jobs. That's not how I view it at all. I think that's not how a lot of folks that are in our department would view it.
Shelby:I think we all collectively feel like everybody is a scientist in some way, whether they realize that or not, because people are asking questions and observing things around them. And so these sorts of components and resources on YouTube really make those a lot more accessible in ways that I think is really important for the field and for being able to communicate some of the stuff that we do and to get people excited about things that they probably engage with every day but maybe aren't engaging with at a deeper level, these sorts of things allow them to do that and appreciate it.
Peter:Absolutely. You know, one of the things that came to mind when you were mentioning about scientists are not just the highly educated people who work in well funded labs and are isolated from the world, but really they're everywhere. Anyone can be a science. It's really the way I see science is it's a way of thinking. It's a way of thinking in which you make questions about the world and you try to find answers by making observations and predictions.
Peter:That does not take higher education. And my experience as a father and going to the kids' classrooms and talking about science and talking about projects that are fun, going all the way back to preschool, they're scientists. They are there. They know how to set up a water table and how to have fun with stream erosion. They know how to look at leaves changing through time.
Peter:And the next step, as I see it, is, alright, let's go to the next level of observations. And one thing after another ends up with you making a camera system to record what's changing naturally in the world. One of our good friends had a science experiment with her daughter that I did not feel brave enough to replicate, and it involved taking some bread and putting it under the sink in a bowl and seeing what kind of mold grew out of it. And I will never forget that that was done here in Bloomington by some enterprising scientist, and they had great observation. But wouldn't it be cool to know just how fast it took place and have the camera system go?
Peter:What's the humidity? What's the temperature that's optimal for that? And all of that you can record and set up. It would be easy to do. You just need the scientist who has the motivation to want to do it.
Shelby:So over the course of this episode, we've seen that you have these really interdisciplinary collaborative projects. You're very skilled scientifically and also sort of instrumentally and working with things in terms of building things and fixing things with your hands. For folks that listen to this and may be interested in some aspects of this field or of working with instrumentation, do you have any advice for them or sort of words of wisdom?
Peter:Well, I don't know about words of wisdom, but I can tell you what worked for me. My words of suggestion for people is just to not be intimidated by feeling like things are too complicated. You know, you can teach yourself a lot of things, but getting direction and approaching people and asking for advice makes it a lot easier and a lot more fun. So I would say, by all means, if you see something interesting going on, ask, get involved, don't hold back. Sometimes I know that when you are starting something new, like in my case the projects that involved the instrumentation, I didn't want to get involved because the people who were able to be mentors, the people who worked on it all the time seemed so busy all the time.
Peter:And yes, they are, but that doesn't mean that they're not willing to help out. So they need to know who's interested, so speak up. And then the other thing is that I think a lot of times when I've got dissuaded from trying hard enough to get something through to its final success, I didn't realize how much effort's involved. Sometimes it does take a lot of effort to get to the point where something actually works. It doesn't happen right away.
Peter:It's good to have projects that take a long time, but it's also good to have things going on at the same time where the goal, the reward is a lot sooner. So I don't know if there's any hard and fast rule about what works and what doesn't work, but for me, I did a lot of this by just my own motivation made me think this would be interesting to pursue. But the most efficient use of my time was always when I was looking at other people and getting advice back from them to help me decide, am I trying something that's too hard? Am I biting off more than I can chew? Or is it possible to put things together in a way that makes something interesting happen?
Shelby:Yeah. I think both aspects of that advice are great. And oftentimes people love to engage with people that are curious about what they do. We now have a whole podcast dedicated to people in the department talking about the things that they're working on, and hopefully, you can tell that that we're all really excited by it. So absolutely sort of reach out and engage with with people if you have questions or you're interested.
Shelby:So, Peter, we end every episode with our yes, please segment where we each get one minute to talk about something we're excited about or passionate about in the moment. And so I always give folks the option of whether you want to go first or you want to go second.
Peter:I'll listen to you first.
Shelby:Okay. If you don't mind to tell me. Ready? I'm ready.
Peter:Go.
Shelby:So yes, please. I want to highlight elements magazine. So folks that are listening may be unfamiliar with this. So elements magazine is a magazine that comes out four or six times a year. I can't remember the frequency.
Shelby:And each issue has a specific theme of something in science with several articles inside that are geared towards sort of highlighting the field at large to a more general audience. So when I was an undergrad student for my senior year, I took a class where we each had to pick an article from Elements and then present on it. And that was really the first time that I felt like some of the science I was interested in felt really accessible. So I had an article on acid mine drainage and ended up presenting on that and got really invested in this idea of mining and of the geochemistry of it. That's ultimately where I ended up with my career.
Shelby:And so Elements Magazine is a really, really great magazine. You can find their articles online and also sometimes in person.
Peter:Well done, you stuck to exactly a minute in two seconds.
Shelby:Are you familiar with Elements Magazine?
Peter:I am familiar with it, but I have not looked at it as much as you're inspired me to do.
Shelby:Yeah, it's really great. And like I said, each article, each issue has a theme, and sometimes they're really specific, so maybe it's one singular element that they focus on. And so all the articles within that highlight that element in different ways. Or sometimes it's a process, so like acid mine drainage, for example. Sometimes it's a planet, and every article within that issue focuses on that planet.
Shelby:So it's a lot of fun to sort of go through and see what the field is interested in.
Peter:Well, so my yes please.
Shelby:Are you ready? Right.
Peter:I am ready.
Shelby:This is Doctor. Peter Sauer's Yes Please, take it away.
Peter:Well, I am happy to be part of this podcast, and in part it's because I said yes. And in particular, what I'm thinking about is I think that the trap I get into is when I focus too hard on one thing for too long, and I don't take advantage of the opportunities that living in a place like Bloomington allows. Bloomington has so many things you can do, like going off and seeing music or going off and walking in the woods when the leaves are changing color, all these beautiful things.
Shelby:Thirty seconds.
Peter:And a lot of them are just there if you get out of the lab, get away from the library, get away from the routine and do it. So my please is go out and explore and make some contact. You know, when I think about all the things that are wrong in the world, which I think about way too much, think a lot of it would be helped by just engaging in what's around and getting to know people better and enjoying life in all of its diversity.
Shelby:Excellent. And I agree wholeheartedly. And what a beautiful time of the year to get out and experience things. The leaves are changing. As of right now, the weather's nice.
Shelby:We'll see if that holds. At least around here, there's all sorts of fall festivals and events that are happening. And now we're sort of moving into the the winter holiday seasons. There's lots of markets that are coming up over each weekend. So, yeah, take advantage of getting out and seeing some of those things.
Shelby:All right, thank you, Peter, for coming on. It was a pleasure to have you here.
Peter:Thank you, Shelby. It's really been a great joy.
Shelby:And I hope that folks that are listening join us next week, where we'll have a new guest. We'll see you then.
Shelby:Earth on the rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR dash 2422824.