Roger Bacon Room 136 Closet

Dust samples were collected in the closet from Roger Bacon Room 136. The dust was collected from the top of a shelf in the closet. Two samples were collected from the shelf. Carbon tape was used to collect the dust by gently tapping the tape onto the surface without pressing down too hard. If pressed down with too much force the tape would end up sticking to the surfaces causing us to grab part of the surface due to the strength of the adhesive. Gloves were worn in order to prevent the contamination of the sample caused by any elements that may be on the hand. The video below will show the process of collecting the dust for Sample 1 and Sample 2 off the shelf. 

After collecting the dust for Sample 1 and Sample 2, the shelf was wiped clean with the intent to reexamine the new dust that we are going to recollect on the shelf in the future. We did research for how long it usually takes new dust to collect and we found it takes about 2-3 weeks. There will be a future post on the newly collected dust. This is done in order to examine whether or not the new dust collected will have the same elemental composition as the old dust. This improves the accuracy and validity of our samples.  Hopefully dust will be visible in time to be able to examine and analyze it. If not, there were be a post notifying that the dust has yet to be visible on the shelf.

This is the mapping of Sample 1. The image of the dust was not included in this so that elements would be more visible on the map. In Sample 1, Silicon, Calcium, Sodium, Aluminum, Sulfur, Chlorine, Potassium, and Magnesium were found.

This is the raw image taken of the Sample 1 under the SEM without any elements added to it. 

This is the mapping of Sample 1 with the raw image included. The image was included so that the locations of the elements at certain parts of the dust were known. This way the composition of each piece of dust viewed at is found. 

This is the spectrum of elements in Sample 1. The spectrum is used to look for elements that do not have a sufficient peak. An insufficient peak means that the element found is not truly there, rather it means the machine has confused the peak of one element for another. Therefore, the element is removed from the spectrum and map. Carbon and Oxygen are two of these elements because they are found in the adhesive Carbon tape, and cannot be accounted for in our data analysis.

This an Excel Spreadsheet of all the elements found in Sample 1. This Excel Spreadsheet is obtained by quantifying the analyzed sample. This data provides the normal weight percentage (norm.wt.%) and the normal atomic percentage (norm.at%).

Element	AN	series	[wt.%]	[norm. wt.%]	[norm. at.%]	Error in wt.% (1 Sigma)
Sodium	11	K-series	0.320271134	4.527656248	6.292115752	0.050992294
Magnesium	12	K-series	0.179499978	2.537581785	3.335664064	0.037977074
Aluminium	13	K-series	0.648718143	9.170894422	10.8593253	0.059959608
Silicon	14	K-series	1.881641812	26.60067177	30.25995848	0.111041768
Sulfur	16	K-series	0.91721584	12.96663231	12.9193389	0.061312659
Chlorine	17	K-series	0.666848277	9.427199169	8.495545108	0.050482663
Potassium	19	K-series	0.428141598	6.05261535	4.945874403	0.040413797
Calcium	20	K-series	2.031325976	28.71674895	22.89217799	0.087443128
		Sum:	7.073662758	100	100

This is the mapping of Sample 2. The elements found in Sample 2 are fairly similar to the ones found in Sample 1. The only difference is that in Sample 2 Iron and Titanium were also found.  This was interesting because the dust collected was not far away from Sample 1. This was also the first time Titanium was found in a dust sample for this research. Further below is a video we created for these findings.





This is Sample 2 without the elements placed into the image.




This is the map of the elements with the image of the dust. This way the elements are matched and placed with the locations where the dust clumps are.

This is the spectrum for Sample 2. The peak for Titanium and Iron are clearly visible. This allows us to include them into  the map.

This is the result of quantifying the analyzed data. It shows how much of each element was present in the dust sample. This shows that Silicon is has the most weight percentage and Sodium has the least.

Element AN series  [wt.%]  [norm. wt.%] [norm. at.%] Error in wt.% (1 Sigma) Sodium 11 K-series 0.305284586 1.498848243 2.038797006 0.048528685 Magnesium 12 K-series 0.407809208 2.002210868 2.576114366 0.050332937 Aluminium 13 K-series 4.913040929 24.12143656 27.95679524 0.272365512 Silicon 14 K-series 6.280177353 30.83363274 34.33155589 0.305845699 Sulfur 16 K-series 1.436890582 7.054666452 6.879908266 0.079860053 Chlorine 17 K-series 1.154936322 5.670362537 5.001640368 0.066457106 Potassium 19 K-series 0.579090767 2.843147736 2.274010696 0.044279748 Calcium 20 K-series 3.801252449 18.66291593 14.56211342 0.138173412 Titanium 22 K-series 0.621392733 3.050836662 1.992579994 0.044058002 Iron 26 K-series 0.868070058 4.261942275 2.386484759 0.049285626 Sum: 20.36794499 100 100

Titanium

Below is a video our group created. In the video a historical event occurred. Upon our research of the RB 136 Closet samples, we found an element that we have never encountered before this moment. We found Titanium! We capitalized on the moment and made a video of our discovery. Even though this may not be the best discovery, for us it was special.