New Dust Sampling in Roger Bacon 136 Bookshelf

A project of Summer Research 2016 was to compare data analyzed between new dust obtained from a location where we already obtained dust and analyzed it. After collecting the dust we cleaned the location. We did this for two locations and the one we will be analyzing in this post is Roger Bacon 136. A period of 20 days were allowed for dust to be accumulated in the cleaned location.

Similar to the procedure shown in the first post of the blog is conducted on this sample.

The data that was obtained is shown below, including the raw data of the elemental composition.

Element	AN	series	[wt.%]	[norm. wt.%]	[norm. at.%]	Error in wt.% (1 Sigma)
Magnesium	12	K-series	0.126009454	1.851589585	2.488742942	0.033900691
Aluminium	13	K-series	1.768736178	25.98990291	31.46797964	0.115097583
Silicon	14	K-series	1.385979959	20.36566279	23.68903262	0.088461615
Sulfur	16	K-series	0.799261829	11.74439556	11.9651134	0.056091193
Chlorine	17	K-series	0.63889081	9.387895342	8.650672307	0.048585004
Calcium	20	K-series	1.04393797	15.33967972	12.5037761	0.057230467
Titanium	22	K-series	0.307056741	4.511907983	3.078484912	0.035176369
Iron	26	K-series	0.6027232	8.856446558	5.180725658	0.042383505
Zinc	30	K-series	0.132878217	1.952519546	0.975472409	0.030730399
		Sum:	6.805474357	100	100

The results that was obtained for the dust sample 20 days ago was;

Element	AN	series	[wt.%]	[norm. wt.%]	[norm. at.%]	Error in wt.% (1 Sigma)
Sodium	11	K-series	0.462124365	6.490968876	9.15554883	0.060391958
Magnesium	12	K-series	0.276086655	3.877895256	5.173803521	0.043458414
Aluminium	13	K-series	0.654099667	9.187441519	11.04173542	0.059937915
Silicon	14	K-series	1.660582071	23.32442813	26.93012241	0.100833669
Sulfur	16	K-series	0.626715149	8.802800357	8.901958126	0.050017739
Chlorine	17	K-series	0.859096484	12.06681353	11.03704386	0.056475889
Potassium	19	K-series	0.5277701	7.413024611	6.148186745	0.043002157
Calcium	20	K-series	1.516960073	21.30712286	17.23964236	0.071686671
Iron	26	K-series	0.536062908	7.529504864	4.37195872	0.041334532
		Sum:	7.119497471	100	100

As usual Oxygen and Carbon are neglected from analyzing and quantifying data.

The New elements that were analyzed were Titanium and Zinc. Titanium was recognized before as non-toxic and harmless because it could be found in lot of objects including house paint, artists’ paint, plastics, enamels and paper therefore the presence of it in the new dust sample could be explained. 

Zinc could be found in materials such as car bodies, street lamp posts, safety barriers and suspension bridges. Oxides of Zinc is also used in electrical and hardware industries and can be found in many products such as paints, rubber, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, plastics, inks, soaps, batteries, textiles and electrical equipment. So the presence of Zinc in Roger Bacon 136 with a lot of electric components (electronics) and students doing summer research can be explained.



Above is a picture of Tristen Protzmann analyzing the new dust sample we collected.

References;

http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/22/titanium

http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/30/zinc