Day 10- Back at the Lab

The next day, we took a bunch of our rock  samples down to the lab and prepared and  analyzed them with some of the cool equipment. First we prepared the samples,  either cutting them up, grinding them  smooth, grinding them into a powder, and  coating them with carbon. Then we stuck some of the various samples into a X-ray analyzer. This  was like the handheld one, except it operated in  a vacuum, so it worked much better and gave  a full analysis. It was also cool because it  used a robotic arm to move around the sample  (see the clip in our video when I post it).

X-Ray Analyzer on left, SEM on right.

Next we used a carbon coater to coat some of the rocks in carbon. Then we stuck them in a SEM  (Scanning Electron Microscope) and looked at  magnifications and analysis of the elements.
While other people were preparing samples, I  worked on the video for a while, editing and helping Kelly, a classmate, write up a  script for our presentation.
We had decided to do a newscast. The news  anchors would sit in the auditorium and  report on the news, news backgrounds and the  video segments would appear on the  projector.
I worked on the movie all that night, and skipped activities to finish it. I stayed up till 2 and got a preliminary version finished, then set it to render.  When I got up at 5, I found the render had a  error, and I had to start over.