astronomy

Katharine Cashman

Katharine Cashman is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Katharine Cashman rather than just read about it. In short: Katharine Venable Cashman (born 19 July 1954) is an American volcanologist, professor of volcanology at the University of Bristol and former Philip H. Knight Professor of Natural Science at the University of Oregon.

Key takeaways

Katharine Cashman belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Katharine Cashman to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Katharine Cashman from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Katharine Venable Cashman (born 19 July 1954) is an American volcanologist, professor of volcanology at the University of Bristol and former Philip H. Knight Professor of Natural Science at the University of Oregon.

Education Cashman was educated at Middlebury College, Vermont where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geology and Biology in 1976. She continued her studies at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and then completed her PhD at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, in 1986. Her PhD research applied theories of crystal size distributions to volcanic systems, and was supervised by Bruce Marsh.

Career and research She was an assistant professor at Princeton University from 1986 to 1991, and then an associate professor (1991–1997) and full professor (1997–present) at the University of Oregon. She moved to the University of Bristol in 2011 on a research professorship funded by the AXA insurance. Cashman studies links between chemical and physical factors that control magma ascent, eruption, and emplacement on the Earth's surface. She has studied volcanoes on all seven continents and explored a wide range of eruption styles. She is best known for her work that links the kinetics of bubble and crystal formation to the behaviour of volcanic materials, but has worked on problems that span from the chemical to physical to social aspects of volcanism. She has worked with all the US volcano observatories and served on the scientific advisory committee for the island of Montserrat. Her research uses a combination of volcanology, igneous petrology, kinetics, microscopy and fluid dynamics with a focus on mafic volcanoes. This includes channel development in Hawaiian lava flows and volcanic ash formation in eruptions. She also has interests in intermediate composition and silicic volcanoes, particularly at Mount St. Helens.

Awards and honours Cashman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. She was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016. As of 2016 she holds a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the Academia Europaea. She is a member of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IACVEI). In 2020 she was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Katharine Cashman

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Katharine Cashman claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Katharine Cashman before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Katharine Cashman ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Katharine Cashman

In research: Katharine Cashman appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Katharine Cashman in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Katharine Cashman is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1954 births, Academics of the University of Bristol, American fellows of the Royal Society, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Katharine Cashman outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Katharine Cashman in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Katharine Cashman means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Katharine Cashman out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Katharine Cashman in simple terms?

Why does Katharine Cashman matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Katharine Cashman?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Katharine Cashman.