Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Shock effects in meteorites provide important insights into impacts on their parent bodies. Eucrites are among the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite (HED) class of achondrites that likely originate from the intact, differentiated asteroid Vesta. Brecciated eucrites provide a record of the impact processes that occurred after the crustal formation of the parent body.…
Shock effects in meteorites provide important insights into impacts on their parent bodies. Eucrites are among the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite (HED) class of achondrites that likely originate from the intact, differentiated asteroid Vesta. Brecciated eucrites provide a record of the impact processes that occurred after the crustal formation of the parent body. Radiometric dating of HEDs has shown that they were affected by resetting events at 3.4 – 4.1 and 4.48 Ga. Therefore, shock effects in HEDs are windows into ancient impacts on asteroids early in solar system history. Northwest Africa (NWA) 8677 is a genomict eucrite with lithologies that are texturally different, but compositionally similar. The clasts in the breccia include strongly shocked (S5) gabbroic fragments and weakly shocked (S3) basaltic clasts. Coesite, a high-pressure polymorph of quartz, is preserved in the core of a large (~250 μm) silica grain, indicating the gabbro was strongly shocked. A large thermal overprint from the surrounding melt resulted in the transformation of coesite to low-pressure silica phases of quartz and cristobalite on the rims of this grain. The shock melt, interstitial to the breccia fragments, exhibits well-developed quench textures and contains a low-pressure mineral assemblage of plagioclase and pyroxene, implying that crystallization occurred after pressure release. The heterogeneity in shock features between the gabbroic and basaltic lithologies suggests that NWA 8677 experienced a variable impact history, which included at least two impact events. An initial impact strongly shocked and brecciated the gabbro and ejected both onto the regolith of the parent body where a more weakly shocked basalt was incorporated. A second impact produced the interstitial melt between the breccia matrix. The temperature of this shock melt remained high after pressure release, resulting in crystallization of a low-pressure assemblage of pyroxene and feldspar, as well as the transformation of quartz + cristobalite rims on coesite
