Kristina Dunkel
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kristinadunkel.bsky.social
Kristina Dunkel
@kristinadunkel.bsky.social
Associate professor in petrology. Research, teaching, and electron microscopy at The Njord Centre and the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo. Interested in mineral reactions, deformation, and microstructures.
Many of us have used Oreo cookies as analogues when explaining plate tectonics, but all this time, "Geo" cookies existed! Who knew?!? What a wasted opportunity. 😁
#GeoEducation
November 5, 2025 at 2:58 PM
This fold in chlorite was not produced by tectonic processes, but by the hands of an iron-age craftsman shaping clay into pottery. Interesting perspective for a geologist like me! I'm enjoying my foray into #archeology. :)
#FridayFold
October 10, 2025 at 10:02 AM
It's been a while, but I just found this "spherulitite" thinsection from the Oslo rift area in our teaching collection and thought that's my sign to contribute to #ThinsectionThursday again! 😃
September 4, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Great fun to see #ElectronMicroscopy images acquired in the Goldschmidt laboratory at @uio.no in petri dishes as part of an art installation!
Artist Ann Edvartsen Hay worked on mineral extraction and its effects on nature and communities:
bodiesofextraction.com

#ArtAndScience
June 27, 2025 at 1:59 PM
A colleague asked for my help in polishing a thin section on short notice. I am quite busy, but who could say no to such a beautiful sample? 🤩
#ThinsectionThursday
May 15, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Fantastic #FieldworkFriday with my petrology students today! We are lucky to have so much exiting geology here around Oslo. Today's focus: intrusive relationships between basalt and syenite, volcaniclastics, and a tiny bit of contact metamorphism.
May 9, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Look at those interference colour fringes 🌈 in calcite! By focusing through the grain I can count eight orders.
#ThinsectionThursday #Microscopy
March 27, 2025 at 9:14 AM
A serpentinite mesh texture for #ThinsectionThursday. Or is it a piece of modern art? 🖌️
Note how there are several generations of serpentine, among them a clear one that filled the first fractures, and a dark one (full of magnetite) that replaced the rest of the olivine.
March 13, 2025 at 10:32 AM
I just pasted this photo into a powerpoint, and the #AI-generated AIt Text is "A person drawing a fish on a rock". 😂 Pretty accurate description!
#geology
February 28, 2025 at 8:52 AM
I have used this garnet mica schist for teaching for years, but never noticed how beautifully the interference colours highlight the foliation (and the varying thickness of the thinsection). Having a scan of the whole section really changes one's perspective.
#ThinsectionThursday
January 23, 2025 at 2:28 PM
I don't often work with igneous rocks, but they do have cool microstructures, too!
Skeletal Fe-Ti-oxide grains with lots of exsolution lamellae. (Width of image is ca 40 µm.)
#ThinsectionThursday
December 19, 2024 at 8:02 AM
Some beautiful interference colours for this week's #ThinsectionThursday. :)
November 28, 2024 at 3:08 PM
For my first #ThinsectionThursday under the blue sky, one of my favourite micrographs: A serpentine pseudomorph after carbonate?
The mineral with the grey interference colours is serpentine which apparently preserves the cleavage of a pre-existing carbonate.
November 21, 2024 at 7:48 AM
I usually prefer working with thinsections, but sometimes 3D samples are fun as well!
Here some gypsum growing in black shale from Oslo.
Field of view ca 10 µm.
#electronmicroscopy
November 19, 2024 at 1:11 PM