This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a portable instrument for measuring the electrical conductivity of rocks in the field. Electrical conductivity is becoming increasingly useful as a bulk property in geophysical surveys for interpreting buried geological structures, but large scale surveys involving the deployment of electrical sources and sensors is expensive and time consuming. A rapid and inexpensive tool for measuring the conductivity of small samples from local outcrops would be very helpful in making efficient deployments of field arrays.
