Cosmogenic Rock Preparation Facility

With the move to Delehanty Hall, we constructed an all new facility for rock preparation. This shared department facility contains all the equipment needed to produce samples ready for mineral separation and quartz purification prior to cosmogenic nuclide analysis.

We use a vented jaw crusher and plate grinder to pulverize rock samples and reduce larger sediment grain sizes.	A Carpco magnetic separator helps by removing many contaminating minerals from samples before quartz purification.
For meteoric 10-Be analysis, we pulverize samples using a SPEX shatter box and various attachments.	We use a ro-tap and varying sieve stacks to isolate grain size fractions for quartz purification and isotopic analysis.
The facility provides for secure storage of both field gear and samples which are in process. This is the view looking out of the lab towards the 1st floor Delehanty hallway.	The facility has ample counter space for organizing samples and lockable drawers for securing samples in process.