• Question: Once the glass beads are made, what do you do with them?

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      Asked by zubicuswordflash to Rowena on 9 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by sianfreeman.
      • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

        Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 9 Mar 2014:

        I put them in an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF), called the S8 Tiger. This machine uses an x-ray beam to excite electrons between shells. Electron shells are different energies, so when an electron jumps shells it adsorbs or emits energy. The XRF measures this energy and tells me exactly which elements are presence and how many of each.

        In a typical sample I might have 36% silicon, 24% aluminium, 11% sodium, 21% iron and 8% chromium by weight. The XRF only detects elements in the periodic table from sodium onwards, so it doesn’t measure oxygen or the borate glass used to fix the samples.

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