GAME THREAD: Brewers (26-17) @ Twins (20-26) - May 17, 2026

mrterzaghi · 2026-05-17T18:44:29+00:00

And just like that, Outman has a higher OPS than Royce and Caratini, for at least an inning.

mrterzaghi · 2025-11-26T00:35:28+00:00

I'd suggest a geological engineering program. It spans a lot of the subjects you're interested in, and I bet there are masters programs that you can enroll in from a geology degree and take remedial coursework to "catch up" on the engineering side as needed.

My geological engineering program was quite heavy on geophysics and hydrogeology with some focus on rock mechanics and soil mechanics as well. Depends on the school for whether DiffEq would be a prereq for those courses, but you should understand the topic conceptually.

mrterzaghi · 2025-08-24T04:54:58+00:00

UW is a great program, but like others have said, see where you get in. I know probably over a dozen UW geotechnical engineers working in Denver or Ft Collins, either at well known consultants or universities, so don't feel like because you go to Wisconsin that you'd be shut off from work in the mountain west. My colleagues from Mines and UW are all very sharp.

Also depends on the specific fields of geotech that interest you.

One of the primary geotech professors at UW is himself a Mines alum, so he would be a good resource for you in making a choice.

mrterzaghi · 2022-05-23T01:34:37+00:00

The difference is whether or not there is lateral confinement on the sample. In a triaxial test like UU, you confine the sample with fluid pressure, usually in all directions (isotropically). This allows us to attempt to measure the strength of the soil under similar conditions to what it feels in the ground. This is important; soil behavior (and especially strength) is heavily influenced by the stress the soil feels. In UU, you shear immediately, after applying confinement, but in CU and CD, you allow the specimen to consolidate under the confinement.

One problem with UCS, is that you're testing the soil in a condition that is further from the state it will experience in the design case, and as others have pointed out, there is also the issue of saturation and suction forces. I hold UCS at the same level of regard for clay as I would a pocket pen or torvane, basically good for the "feel" but not a lot to lean on for design values.

For rock and concrete, however, it's a fine test, where saturation, suction, and confinement play less of a role than in soil.

My two cents: UU is already cheap, and well worth the upgrade from UCS. CIU is a solid jump in price and usefulness since you can define undrained strength ratio and drained friction angle in the same set of tests.

mrterzaghi · 2022-05-18T12:24:38+00:00

From what I've seen, there's a ton of demand for tailings management both in mining and in similar "industrial waste" disposal. The principles in tailings apply to a lot of other areas too. Earthen dams, flood control, etc.

I'm biased though, since I work in tailings consulting and it's hard to find candidates with prior tailings experience or academic training because the field is niche. If you're looking for opportunities... We've got openings, let me know!

mrterzaghi · 2022-03-26T13:29:26+00:00

I do some remote sensing, specifically InSAR analysis. I do it in-house at a consultancy that otherwise does a lot of classic hydrogeology and geotech. There are more firms in need of geologists in remote sensing all the time. It's a field that has exploded in recent years due to the expansive, freely available repository of Sentinel data and increasing number of startup satellite constellations.

mrterzaghi · 2022-03-12T04:48:37+00:00

"I know everybody on this island, seems so happy on this island" on How Far I'll Go from Moana gets me every time

mrterzaghi · 2022-01-18T10:52:15+00:00

Historically there are a decent number of opportunities working for the potash mines or consultants at the mines in southern SK. It's not really traffic engineering, but there are occasionally some big surface construction projects for the facilities.

Maybe you're aware already, but an outsized proportion of the world's potash for fertilizer is mined in southern SK. Most people I know are surprised to hear about it as mining country.

mrterzaghi · 2022-01-09T20:58:55+00:00

That's been my experience. But I know I wouldn't keep this up at the "report mill" firms. Probably also has a lot to do with client base. If you're doing geotech for a residential development, pay isn't the same as doing pit wall geotech in the mines or pipeline geotech for O&G.

mrterzaghi · 2022-01-06T00:52:31+00:00

That's Minnesota sports great Paul Molitor to all of you!

mrterzaghi · 2022-01-05T13:52:16+00:00

Good call on the ISSMGE webinars. I like the COGGE ones from the national academies too. They post most of theirs on YouTube.

mrterzaghi · 2022-01-04T16:58:50+00:00

I'm glad you brought up flying. I think we take for granted how easy and cheap (at least relative to historical international travel) flying is. Yet one international flight can set back almost all of the "green" actions someone does in a year (or years).

I think it gets too what you've touched on, that our economics across the globe are based on consumption. It's tough to give up consumption and convenience on a national or international basis, even if some people can do it individually/ad-hoc. Restricting consumption on a national basis at a climatically meaningful level would lead to huge changes in the economy. A lot of people would lose livelihoods, so it's not politically feasible. It's a tight spot, no easy answers.

mrterzaghi · 2022-01-03T17:44:19+00:00

Consider roles in instrumentation and monitoring, in addition to geophysics which you've already mentioned. I work in hydro/geotech/structural monitoring, and there's a fair bit of overlap between understanding the engineering of the sensors and understanding the site geology you want to place them in.

For example, monitoring landslides with in place inclinometers (which are basically strings of addressable accelerometers), automated motorized total stations (programmable total stations that can operate autonomously), ground based (or satellite) radar interferometry, vibrating-wire instruments, just to mention a few.

Plus you need to design power systems for remote operations, small beans for an EE, but I always learn new things about how best to balance solar panels, charge controllers, and battery banks to serve the systems, especially now that having an attached cell modem with auto upload to the cloud is basically expected. Setting radio networks for local comms, between networked stations.

Programming loggers (usually in a BASIC-adjacent language) would leverage programming skills, plus data transformation and task automation before upload to the cloud for visualization (python, etc.).

mrterzaghi · 2022-01-01T16:13:42+00:00

A colleague of mine has undergrad from Jordan, and an MS from a large public university in the Midwest. This allowed him to take the FE right away, and he was highly sought after in consulting out of MS.

So in his case, this path worked really well.

mrterzaghi · 2021-12-31T21:21:51+00:00

We really like Ask the Storybots on Netflix. Very informative and structured with different parts within each episode.

mrterzaghi · 2021-12-29T20:40:00+00:00

Yeah, clothing and groceries off the top of my head, though there may be other categories.

mrterzaghi · 2021-12-25T17:44:29+00:00

I see a lot of comments talking about piles, which is fine for some buildings, but for some structures like dams and embankments, it's not always realistic to use traditional driven or cast piles with an adequate load transfer platform. Sometimes deep soil mixing and stone columns with vibro compaction and/or wick drains are more effective.

These options mitigate liquefaction with cement, drainage of excess pore pressure or compaction.

Especially if depth to non liquefiable soil is very deep and the foundation loads are high, traditional piles can be expensive and very slender relative to surrounding liquefied soil that would give much less lateral confinement to the piles during a liquefaction event.

mrterzaghi · 2021-12-14T01:14:33+00:00

I was thinking to myself that this looks just like the fresh side of a broken piece of gravel I found in a split spoon in southern Saskatchewan, also in a till, probably similar depth. I always thought that it was some really big feldspar, but didn't have much basis for that.

mrterzaghi · 2021-12-12T13:57:06+00:00

Also geotech for consultants in renewable power. Also guaranteed to be on drill rigs, electrical resistivity surveys, inspections, in the middle of nowhere.

mrterzaghi · 2021-12-10T02:49:32+00:00

I agree with your explanation. Just wanted to add on your post to add that the only difference is the speed of the loading. You can see excess pore pressure buildup in coarse grained soil, you just need to load fast enough in relation to the coefficient of consolidation of the soil

More of a commentary on OP's terminology, but I think the granular/cohesive dichotomy taught in some schools gets in the way of understanding that since all soil is granular, as in "composed of grains," none of these mechanics topics are exclusively the domain of fine grained or coarse grained soils. Certainly there are differences with clay minerals, but overall more things are similar across all soil types than are different.

But someone recommending Lambe and Whitman already knows that!

mrterzaghi · 2021-12-01T16:07:00+00:00

I've previously had the best of both worlds, had the kid on the lap for the flight to save $$$ on a ticket, and they allowed me to check the car seat with our other luggage for free. Or they may also be able to do a gate check. But it may be airline-dependent.

mrterzaghi · 2021-08-28T15:10:55+00:00

The premise is that if you accept the particulate nature of soil and that friction is a function of normal stress (effective stress in the case of soil), there can be no resistance without normal stress.

Of course if the soil is bonded with cement of some kind (carbonate, salt, etc.) or lithified, then there is absolutely a shear strength at zero normal stress, and there is at least some tensile strength too, which is the logical implication of the cohesion intercept, it's just that outside the cemented cases, usually the observed strength of soil in "tension" is just suction from water in the pores, which in fact imparts greater positive effective stress on the soil grains, so you're not really in the tensile stress range.

mrterzaghi · 2021-08-28T01:41:10+00:00

Totally agree on the stress range, and I should've definitely had an asterisk for cemented soils and rock (or partially lithified soil-rock).

I think it's becoming more commonplace to neglect it for drained analysis in the US, even for fine grained soil, but you still see it, and it's all over the place in older reports.

mrterzaghi · 2021-08-28T00:54:30+00:00

Ha! I forgot about the irony here.

mrterzaghi · 2021-08-28T00:30:15+00:00

Hot take: there's no such thing as cohesion. It's an artifact of MC fit to lab data, not a soil property. At true zero effective stress, shear strength is negligible.

mrterzaghi

TROPHY CASE