A University of Idaho researcher is set to receive a nearly $600,000 grant from a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to study changes in oceanic ridges and educate students on geology through videogames.
The grant will allow Eric Mittelstaedt, an assistant professor in the UI Department of Geological Sciences to create three videogames to teach 10 to 18-year-olds about marine geology and fund his research on the interaction of the borders of tectonic plates with mantle plumes.
Mittelstaedt will work with two UI professors, Barry Robison and Terence Soule, who founded Polymorphic Games, to create the geology-based games under a new studio.
He said undergraduate students will develop the games, guided by an undergraduate geology student who will provide them with the scientific background.
Eric Mittelstaeddt | Courtesy
The ALVIN submersible is launched off the back of the research vessel Atlantis.
“We’ll be developing games that are not the typical sort of learning games,” Mittelstaedt said. “The idea is that the games will be standard games, but a lot of the mechanics will be based on geologic data sets or phenomena.”
He said on mid-ocean ridges, there are often hydrothermal vents. These vents can have different chemistry and can lie in different types of rock.
“For example, it could be you have to build base structures which take on different characteristics depending on the type of vents you build them on or next to,” Mittelstaedt said. “Players will learn about geologic processes because they affect success in the game.”
The proposal is to make three games in five years. He said they will all be relatively simple. The current plan is to make a tower defense game, a real time strategy game and a virtual reality exploration game, in which the player might explore an environment in a submarine, he said.
He said with the work required for the virtual reality, the team will be saving that one for last.
Mittelstaedt studies tectonic plates, the sections of the Earth’s hard crust which move slowly over the relatively viscous mantle. New crust is formed when mantle rises where these plates drift apart as old crust sinks back into the mantle where the plates collide.
Separations of the crust create dramatic geographical features in the crust — mountains or ridges, typically only found underwater. Mittelstaedt’s research uses a section of ridge more easily accessible than the depths of the ocean—the Mid-Atlantic Ridge cuts through Iceland, and it’s visible from the surface. Iceland and other areas where the borders of tectonic plates touch mantle plumes, show multiple, parallel ridges and it’s these “ridge jumps” that Mittelstaedt studies.
“The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which goes through Iceland, is moving to the Northwest relative to the plume,” Mittlelstaedt said. “Every once and a while, the ridge jumps back toward the center of the plume.”
A plume, he said, is a particularly hot upwelling of mantle and is stationary compared to the drifting continents. He said not all ridges have a plume below them. The ridge is just where the rock is splitting apart and as it moves away from the plume, a new ridge will form over the plume, he said. The ridges left behind, Mittelstaedt said, show a record of previous locations of the ridge.
“At Iceland, we see what looks like a bend of the ridge toward the Southeast. On Iceland, we’ll see a series of old ridge axes,” Mittlestaedt said. “Iceland is a great example of that because the ridge is above water so people can age-date those. There’s good evidence this happens all over the earth.”
On this project, he said he will work with Anne Davaille, a specialist in laboratory analogue modeling at the French National Center for Scientific Research. Mittelstaedt said Devaille uses scale models of ridges in her lab and one of the Ph.D. students funded by Mittelstaedt’s CAREER Award will travel to work with her in France for about four months.
Mittelstaedt said he hopes the grant will allow him to bring students of a variety of disciplines together, from computer science, art and geology, to gain a hands-on learning experience.
He said the grant will be spread out over five years and will fund two Ph.D. students who will be conducting a majority of the research — everything from writing the code to writing papers. Mittelstaedt said he is looking for students to apply to these two positions.
Game development, he said, will likely start summer of 2019.
Nishant Mohan can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NishantRMohan