Hello! My name is Teri Oehmke and I will be one of the writers of the blog this summer. I am working on the debris-flow experiments in the Civil Engineering building at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities this summer.

Since the summer has only just begun, we haven’t had that many adventures so far, but I’ll fill you in on what we have done.  After orientation, a few of the interns decided that we need bikes for the summer, we had some fun going around to different stores to try to find bikes that were in our price range (cheap) and then pumping them up and getting them road ready. We still need to buy lights for night time riding, but we’ve enjoyed exploring the city with them during the day!

We also had a chance to do a few example experiments in the lab. We’ve run one day of debris-flow experiments and two days of sediment transport experiments. The debris-flow experiments basically consist of us weighing masses of beads to act as the debris-flow (supply) and another mass to act as an erodible bed. We then release the supply over the bed and see how much of the original supply is deposited on the erodible bed and how much of the erodible bed ends up in our tray at the end of the slope.

The sediment transport experiments deals with the relationship between the flow and the transport of a pebble placed at the bed. We played around with the weirs to change the flow height and speed and discover how different speeds affect the movement of the pebble.

We’ve also had some time to visit local events going on in Minneapolis. Last week we participated in the Northern Spark art festival. Despite the rain, we still had a great time.

That’s all I have for now. Stay tuned for more adventures next week!

-Teri

Intern Jabari Jones sets a pebble on the bottom of the sediment flume to see how the pebble will be affected by the flow.

We learned our inner folk song, C’mon Everybody by Eddie Cochran, at the Folkopolis tent during Northern Spark.

New bikes make transportation from the dorm to the Saint Anthony’s Falls lab and around the Twin Cities area much easier!

Students weigh the particles to determine what the deposition was during a debris flow experiment.