{"id":10,"date":"2020-05-29T11:20:44","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T10:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/?p=10"},"modified":"2020-06-05T10:21:29","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T09:21:29","slug":"sampling-sardinia-on-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/2020\/05\/29\/sampling-sardinia-on-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"Sampling Sardinia on screen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Students in the third year of Imperial\u2019s Geology course, one of the courses offered by the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering, usually take part in a field trip to Sardinia. This year, course leaders translated the course to an online environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Virtual Sardinia is a new way of learning geology that is accessible to everyone. This virtual field trip lets students wander around and inspect 3D models of real rocks in the game engine Unity. It aims to provide as realistic an experience as possible, since geological field training is intended to prepare students for working in the real world. It nevertheless lets students do more than would be possible in real life, including hovering in the air with rocket packs and exploring abandoned mines. Above all it aims to be fun, because to a geologist, fieldwork is geology fun.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"461\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/files\/2020\/05\/beach-1024x461.jpg\" alt=\"Virtual view of a rocky beach\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The beautiful beach at Torre del Porticciollo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Emilia Dobb<\/strong>, a student on the course, tells us more:<\/p>\n<p>Despite a lot of students feeling disappointed that they couldn\u2019t travel to Sardinia on a field trip, I was very excited that the trip had become virtual. I have a disability which means I can\u2019t normally attend fieldwork, so the experience has been extra special for me.<\/p>\n<p>The virtual fieldwork has been amazing so far. Our lecturers have put so much effort into making the trip fun and immersive. They have developed an app for us to explore 3D outcrops, and accommodated them with high-resolution photographs, 3D images of rock samples and even incorporated a virtual microscope which we can use to analyse the rocks through thin sections.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Leading the RSM third year fieldtrip to Sardinia (Virtual). Here we are this morning at wonderful Capo Caccia. This is a 3D environment you can walk around and geologically poke. The entire year fell off the cliff. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ImperialRSM?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@ImperialRSM<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/S1BzlQdQGH\">pic.twitter.com\/S1BzlQdQGH<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Matthew Genge (@rockbloke) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rockbloke\/status\/1263451833206480900?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 21, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The trip has consisted of taught fieldwork in the morning and self-fieldwork in the afternoon. This means students in Asia can participate in the taught sessions too and do their self-fieldwork in the morning before the next guided fieldwork starts. Along with the use of the app, Google Earth has supplemented our learning and allows for good field observations from photos that already exist on there. Ironically with virtual fieldwork we have been able to study some localities that we normally wouldn\u2019t have been able to if we\u2019d have actually gone to Sardinia, as they\u2019re too dangerous on the roadside. Following the fieldwork at the different localities, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/people\/m.genge\">Dr Matthew Genge<\/a> then summarises the observations and interpretations we\u2019ve made, just like he would in the field, but over Microsoft Teams instead.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first fieldwork I have been able to attend since fresher\u2019s week in my first year, and I\u2019ve loved every minute of it. I feel like I\u2019ve learnt so much, and it\u2019s been great to be able to apply what I have learnt in lectures to real-life examples in the field \u2013 which is exactly what fieldwork is about, but normally I wouldn\u2019t get that opportunity.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"461\" class=\"wp-image-12 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/files\/2020\/05\/fromthetop-1024x461.jpg\" alt=\"A virtual grassy hill top\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The view from the top of a volcano<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"461\" class=\"wp-image-14 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/files\/2020\/05\/mine-1024x461.jpg\" alt=\"A virutal view of a dark mine shaft\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mapping the abandoned Argentiera silver mine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The app has been pretty fun to navigate. We have an AI demonstrator for the fieldwork in the app called GeeDee (Geology demonstrator), who has quite the attitude. I\u2019ve grown quite fond of her and find myself talking to her when she gets in my way or disappears out of view\u2026this is what happens during lockdown! We can walk around the outcrop as we would in the field and can even drop a field notebook to get a sense of scale, and use a compass-clino for dip and dip direction measurements. There are glowing spots on the outcrop which give us more information, such as the photographs and 3D rock samples. So far, we\u2019ve driven quads around huge quarries (which I tend to crash and get stuck!) and used a jet pack to fly above a volcano to look at its shape, as well as to fly back onto the clifftop when we\u2019ve fallen off! We\u2019ve encountered goats, snakes and sharks too!<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to say a huge thank you to our lecturers for putting this incredible experience together for us all. They\u2019ve really made the best of an unfortunate situation.<\/p>\n<p>To find out more about our undergraduate courses in Earth Science and Engineering, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/study\/ug\/courses\/earth-science-department\/\">visit the Study website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Students in the third year of Imperial\u2019s Geology course, one of the courses offered by the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering, usually take part in a field trip to Sardinia. This year, course leaders translated the course to an online environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual Sardinia is a new way of learning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1267,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[741,276,89,282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-department-of-earth-science-and-engineering","category-education","category-students","category-undergraduate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}