Time in the Lab...
In TherMotU at Arizona State University
This is the AlexSYS high temperature Calvet type calorimeter (nicknamed "Venus") in TherMotU. In this picture we are measuring the temperature in the calorimeter (see the green wires?). The temperature is 800°C! Now that we checked the temperature of the calorimeter we can perform drop calorimetry or solution calorimetry to better understand the thermodynamic properties of our materials. Read more about calorimetry here.
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The metal pieces are a die press used to make pellets of powdered samples. You can see the small cup that has a pressed pellet of alumina powder in it. This ~3.5 mg sample is ready for transpose drop calorimetry. Alumina is used as a calibrant for the calorimeters.
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Action shots coming soon...
In the Light Stable Isotope Lab at UT Austin
In the dish I have a crushed rock sample with minerals ~0.2mm in size. Using fine point tweezers and a binocular microscope I am picking out different minerals. In this case I am picking out garnets for oxygen isotopes analysis. Oxygen isotopes (and isotopes in general) can tell us something about where the garnets formed!
GasBench Autosampler for C & O isotopes in carbonates! This sample block can hold up to 96 samples. First you load your sample into the glass tube (~2mg of carbonate is needed for quality analyses). The sample tubes are loaded into the GasBench and flushed with helium gas. Phosphoric acid is manually injected into each vial with a syringe. The carbonates present in the sample react with the acid and produce CO2. The carbon and oxygen isotope values of the CO2 produced by this reaction are measured by the mass spectrometer.
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Here, I am using a high precision microbalance to measure ~2 mg of mica into a small silver capsule. This mica is a USGS standard that is used for hydrogen isotope analysis. I will also prepare hydrous minerals like chlorite and serpentine for hydrogen isotope analysis.
The computer screen is showing the live feed from the laser fluorination line. In the sample holder, pictured on the screen, is ~2 mg of garnet being analyzed for its oxygen isotopes. The joystick is driving a the CO2 laser over the surface of the sample. The glow is the fluorination reaction that is releasing the oxygen from the crystal structure. Once the sample has fully reacted (no more glow) the gas is sent through a series of cold and warm "traps" to isolate the oxygen and remove other elements liberated from the fluorination reaction.
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In the Experimental Petrology and Igneous Processes Center (EPIC) at ASU
In this time lapse I am putting up a piston cylinder experiment. The piston cylinder is the blue apparatus and the tan box next to it controls the temperature and pressure. All of the plates assembled in the "stack" are to ensure pressure is evenly distributed and helps cool the pressure vessel.
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"Conditioning" experimental capsules for piston cylinder experiments
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Behind the computer...
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