Brilliant Barite

2/15/13

Today I was a little late getting to my internship due to Emma idol. Even with a late start, Daniele, Heather and I were still able to get a bit done. We started cleaning out 2 previous capsules, one which contained galena and the other sphalerite. The sulfur within the galena capsule looked dark and not normal compared to previous capsules, so Daniele and I think some of the recycled sulfur-34 we have been using has been picking up contaminants. We decided to be a little more careful and selective with the recycled sulfur-34 to try and prevent contamination. The galena mineral was easy enough to extract from the capsule, but the sphalerite capsule was giving us a little trouble. Even though we had put the capsules on their sides when taking them out of the furnace to try and prevent the sulfur from encompassing the mineral in the capsule, the sulfur had still completely covered the sphalerite mineral. We began to slowly chip away at the unrelenting sulfur with a combination of a metal pick and ethanol. While we were soaking the capsule in ethanol, we decided to do an experiment with a new mineral. Sphalerite and galena are both sulfides, but we decided to use a sulfate. While a sulfide is just a mineral that contains sulfur, a sulfate contains both sulfur and oxygen molecules. Heather found some barite in a display case outside the lab and we used a makeshift chisel to extract some shards. After chiseling out some tiny chunks, we began to examine the shards under the microscope to see if we would have to polish them. While some of the barite contained little black flecks, which were particles the mineral had picked up throughout its growth, most of the shards would be experiment-ready with a little polishing. I headed over to the hot plate and melted some crystal bond on a tiny metal disk before setting the minerals. I polished them on a fine grain and when I was finished, Heather had just enough time to show me a video of a meteor that had landed in Russia. The compilation of videos was amazing and though the meteor did injure around 1000 people, the meteor in the video was pretty incredible to look at. You can watch the video here!
Hopefully next week we'll get a chance to make a capsule for the barite and put it in the furnace along with look at some more data.