Aagje Eijsink

For my PhD project, I did a research stay at the UiO, the University of Oslo. The general aim of my PhD is studying earthquakes and the transition from slow to fast earthquakes. As part of that, I focus on the interaction between the geometry of the fault surface and the frictional forces that act on the fault surface. For this, I combine friction experiments which I did in the laboratory at the MARUM, with high resolution optical measurements of the fault surface. One of the measurements techniques that can be used for those measurements is white light interferometry (WLI).

During my research stay with Prof. Francois Renard at the Njord center at the University of Oslo, I was able to use this device. Not only did he help me to use the WLI and analyze the measurements, he is also a specialist in the field of power spectral analyses of surfaces and discussing my data with an expert gave me many insights and a much better understanding of the mathematically complicated subject. One major drawback of this measurement technique is that samples must reflect enough light to be detected, which unfortunately was not the case for almost half of my samples. We did try an alternative method, close-range photogrammetry, which means I managed to learn two new measurement techniques.

Also life at the Njord was a very interesting experience, not in the last place because they are part of the PGP working group (physics of geological processes) which is embedded in the physics department instead of affiliated with geosciences or marine sciences. This means that the work they do has a different background than I have, but it was very interesting to discuss with other PhDs and post-docs about for example the energy budget of earthquakes or the molecular scale deformation of calcite. Probably the best custom they have in this group and quite typical for Norway (or so I have heard), were the Friday wine seminars. These are seminars at Friday afternoon about fun topics that were slightly related to the conducted research in the group, while enjoying a glass of cheap red wine. One example was about the mathematically best shape of seeds falling from trees to delay their flight. Of course, there were also more serious (lunch) seminars, including the one I gave myself about my research topic.

I am very grateful that I got the opportunity to do this research stay and would like to thank GLOMAR for the funding (Norway is expensive) and the entire group in Oslo for hosting me. Apart from the great help I received from Prof. Renard with my work, I also made many new friends in Oslo. The group of people I worked with was very international and was very open and welcoming. They took me along to the weekly pub quiz evenings, took me out for a pub-crawl on the weekends and invited me to the American-style Thanksgiving dinner they organized, which made that apart from great research results, I also had a great time.