RADFORD – This summer, Laura Sweat spent several hot, summer days reading data from a handheld computer while struggling to drag a long, heavy cable thousands of feet across the RU campus.

It wasn’t easy work, but the senior physics major from Roanoke was thrilled to have the opportunity.

Sweat, along with physics professor Rhett Herman, used the electrical resistivity subsurface mapper called an OhmMapper to survey and compile data over parking lots adjacent to Waldron Hall that is soon to be home to a signature building for the College of Business and Economics.

“I love Radford University because you get a chance to do so much and work one-on-one with professors,” Sweat said. “I just love that.”

Together, Herman and Sweat downloaded from the OhmMapper the data into software that generated an electrical resistivity profile of each traverse in the surveyed territory. This process, Herman explained, is like an electrical CAT scan of the subsurface showing where wet soil and dry bedrock are located. The bedrock is important in order to locate the building safely in the proposed area.

(IN THE PHOTO: Physics professor Rhett Herman gives a nudge to Laura Sweat as she struggles to drag the OhmMapper. “It feels as if someone is pulling backwards on you at a force of about 120 pounds,” Herman said about pulling the device.)

“Laura put in a total of about eight days on the project, sweating out under the hot sun for nothing more than the experience with the equipment,” Herman said. “She was there for the equipment glitches, the recovery and the final data acquisition. This was supposed to be a quick project, but it turned into a three-week monster.”

Herman and Sweat, who teamed with engineering firm Draper Aden Associates for the project, was charged with collecting data to determine the bedrock structure in the ground under the site for the proposed COBE building.

He and Sweat provided Draper Aden with a traverse location map and a map detailing areas of potential karst or detrimental foundation conditions that should be further investigated during the geotechnical engineering study for the proposed building site.

Draper Aden engineers will use images that Herman and Sweat generated from the data to plan for the construction site preparation in order to seat the building firmly in the bedrock. The bedrock structure is quite complicated under the proposed site, but the data provided by Herman and Sweat will be helpful in the digging process, Herman said.

The collaboration between Herman, Sweat and Draper Aden developed when the engineering firm learned, through geology Professor Skip Watts and Facilities Planning and Construction Director Roy Saville, of Herman’s experience and prowess with the OhmMapper.

“The thing about the OhmMapper is that it acquires data without having to drill small holes in hundreds of places in the parking lots and roads in the survey area,” Herman said. “If we did drill, those holes would then have to be patched but that would weaken the structure of the asphalt in that whole area.”

That is one of the many things that makes the OhmMapper unique, Herman noted. The technology is relatively new, and it’s the same advanced technology that has been perfect for Herman’s previous research.

Herman used the device when he took RU students to explore arctic sea ice in Barrow, Alaska and when he teamed with students and RU professors Cliff and Donna Boyd to search for the remains of 24 members of the U.S. Marine Goettge Patrol who perished during the August 1942 Battle for Guadalcanal.

The work between Herman and Sweat is a direct example of the university’s strategic plan, 7-17, Forging a Bold New Future, to increase expectations and support for faculty to work as partners with students in the learning process.

“We previously have not done anything so complicated for industry,” Herman said. “I have used the Ohmmapper for finding graves in Barrow and Arlington National Cemetery and foundations in Arlington and Saltville in my work. However, the work with Draper Aden is unique and likely will lead to further collaborations that will give our students invaluable experience with working in a professional format.”