NORTON - Teacher-student teams from Wheaton College and Cornell University are expected to spend the 2010 spring break in the Himalayas through a two-year, $250,000 National Science Foundation grant.

The researchers will take surface water, gas and rock samples at the Himalayan hot springs in Nepal, Wheaton assistant professor of chemistry and geology Matthew Evans said.

Researchers will analyze the samples' carbon content at Wheaton and Cornell, he said.

Carbon dioxide and water form carbonic acid, which decays minerals at the earth's surface and ultimately provides "the ingredients for making shells," Evans said.

The cycle can take millions of years, "at the shortest, 50,000 to 100,000 years," he said. The research "gets into a little bit of defining the fundamental science that's occurring" and offers insight into "how things are going to react over the next 200,000 years," Evans said.

Evans said a Cornell professor and graduate student are in the Himalayas now, doing "more fine-tuned sampling than we've been able to do in the past."

Evans said he hopes he and a Wheaton undergraduate student will join them for two weeks during spring break.

Wheaton's share of the grant is $109,880. Cornell received the rest, Evans said.

"It's great for us, especially as science faculty, to get students the ability to do these things," he said, noting that the research expands work done for his 2002 dissertation.

Evans said he probably will return to the Himalayas next fall, when his junior sabbatical starts.

MICHAEL GELBWASSER covers Norton for The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at mgelbwasser@thesunchronicle.com.