Preparing Central/Eastern Oregon Glass for Mass Spectrometry

Glass samples prepared for mass spectrometry

Vogt Scholar Julian Cohen reports: “I completed my field work over 11 days at the end of August and collected around 30 glass samples from various places all over central and eastern Oregon. Since then, I’ve been working to prepare them for mass spectrometry analysis by crushing, sieving, and cleaning the glass shards. Photo (left) is of some relatively “clean” glass, meaning there aren’t a lot of surface precipitates on it that might impact the analysis. I’ll have to run many samples through a series of acid washes to clean the shards to insure there isn’t contamination! I’ll be at the University of Texas Austin in December to do my analyses.”