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All Aflame

April 17, 2017

A sample is flame-sealed by Kathryn Elder for radiocarbon analysis at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility at WHOI. The facility provides a range of radiocarbon dating services to the ocean sciences research community and many others worldwide. Elder recently developed a new, single-step method to convert organic samples to graphite for measurement on either of NOSAMS’s two accelerators. The method is less labor intensive and cheaper than the previous method, which involved multiple steps. The new technique pictured here allows the rapid analysis of a large number of samples at lower cost. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)