There’s no atmosphere on the moon and therefore no drag on the dirt that spews from volcanos there. So those pieces of dirt are shaped as spheres.
On Earth, those volcanic pieces have an aerodynamic shape.
Earth’s oldest basalts – or dark volcanic rock – are a few hundred million years old. The moon’s are a few billion years old.
And there’s no weathering on the moon, so its rocks are better preserved.
You can teach those lessons with words, but there’s nothing like the “cool factor” of actually showing moon rocks to students, O’Sullivan said.
“They were so excited,” she said. “Everyone showed up for class that day.”
Also showing up to see the rocks were O’Sullivan’s deans in the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering plus CSUB’s provost and president.
So how does one convince NASA to part for two weeks with priceless national treasurers, ones kept in a special temperature-controlled vault at the Johnson Space Center in Houston?
O’Sullivan had had experience handling moon rocks. After earning her bachelor’s degree in geology from CSUB in 2007, she went to Notre Dame for her doctorate and worked on samples astronauts brought back from Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the moon.
During an internship at NASA in 2008, Sullivan helped scope out potential landing sites for a future lunar mission. That mission was later scrapped.