• Question: what type of machines do you use?

    Asked by Carmela 7C to Tom on 10 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Thomas Barrett

      Thomas Barrett answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      Most of them are displayed briefly in my profile. I use a lot of machines so I hope you have some time to read this 😛

      You have the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) which is used like a microscope as school only much much more powerful!

      I use a NanoSIMS (Nancy as I call her). SIMS stands for Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer, which is a fancy way of say we blast using an ion beam (beam of charged particles) a small pit into the rock and measure all the stuff we blast out.

      I use a machine called FINESEE with which you put your sample in and heat it up till it burns and you measure all the gas that is released as you burn it at different temperatures.

      I also use a Raman laser which is a really weak laser to measure the structure of minerals.

      And finally an ICP-MS which is an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer. You need to play with lots of acids in beakers for this one. You dissolve the rock up in acids then put it into the machine and it vaporizes everything and then we measure all the rare earth elements that are needed for things like computers and smart phones.

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