This is the story of the blue rock.
I think this is from the Blanchard mine form a field trip there (many thanks to our hosts, the NM Rock and Mineral Club who have the patent on that mine).
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It is an interesting rock full of all kinds of minerals and elements.
At one end there is a heavy deposit of metallic looking material, XRFs as Pb, so
probably Galena according to the book.
A piece of the metallic stuff broke off as seen in the first picture.
This small piece was going to be the next target tested.
One method to analyze smaller samples liken this is the stick them on a small disk of card-stock cardboard with double sided tape. I must have pressed it onto the tape too hard with the tweezers, resulting of just a tiny flake breaking off and sticking to the tape. Not much more than a smudge really but shiny like metal so but the tape was ruined, so the choices were throw that away and make a new sample, or test it just for the heck of it.
Someone on this group always said "test everything", so why not.
Set up for skinning angle, 30kV 20uA 30 then 60 seconds. The samples is smaller than the hole in the collimator on the sensor, and the beam is only 1mm diameter, so getting things lines up was a problem. Turning the sample around backwards gave me a better idea where it was on the card, since it was off center, so the beam now comes through the back and the XRF goes out the back through the tape and the card into the 1mm hole to the sensor.
And the results (.mca attached).- what do you think, Galena?
Geo
