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Framing a Field

Fom left, Senior carpenter Rowland Cummings, engineer Paul Fucile, and post doctoral investigator Masako Tominaga view a custom Helmholtz Coil frame Cummings built, before winding wire on it. By passing electric current through a Helmholz coil scientists can generate magnetic fields matching Earth’s field in any region. Tominaga and WHOI geophysicist Maurice Tivey study seafloor magnetism for clues to geologic processes. They will use this coil to calibrate magnetometers to be mounted on oceanographic floats that drift with ocean currents and send back data about the magnetism of little-studied ocean basins.
(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)