9727134 Lasaga This grant provides partial support of the costs of upgrading computer facilities for the geochemistry research group at Yale University. New hardware purchases will include 2 DEC alpha workstations with 64 bit RISC architectures, X-terminals to provide additional access to these new workstations, PC's, a Macintosh compatible workstation, a laptop computer, EXABYTE tape drives and a high performance video card for graphics-intensive applications. The geochemistry group at Yale is at the forefront of geochemical model development. Research on dissolution kinetics of aluminosilicates and the effects of water on the kinetics of silicate melt crystallization utilize ab initio quantum mechanical models and Monte Carlo methods to model reactions and are highly computationally intensive. Future research will be aimed at modeling mass transport in hydrothermal systems. Code will be developed to model, isotopic exchange between moving fluids and mineral grains, growth and dissolution of framework silicates and metasomatic reactions. Existing computational facilities are now out-of-date given the rapidity of obsolescence in the computer industry and the capabilities of new workstations will be immediately beneficial to this group and their students. ***
