Lab 7: Measuring stable isotopes#
Attention
Course last offered Spring 2025.
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Introduction#
In this lab, you will learn how geochemists use mass spectrometers to measure the carbon and oxygen isotopic composition of carbonate minerals. These solid minerals are dissolved into a gas and introduced to the mass spectrometer. There is a range of possible masses the gas molecules can have, and you will learn how to convert observations of the relative abundance of each of those molecular masses back to the isotopic composition of the individual elements that make up the gas molecules.