The Stable Isotope Facility is a suite of labs in LEC 1. They analyse samples for LU staff and students, as well as other universities and private customers. The lab is centred around two isotope ratio mass spectrometers (IRMS) that are used for analysing the non-radioactive isotopes in environmental samples. Dave Hughes has been the lab manager for 15 years, and has a background in geology, industry and as a cartoonist for Geoscientist magazine.

The week starts with checking the mass spectrometers. The stable isotope facility has two of them and they need a bit of coaxing back to life after a weekend’s rest (and no I haven’t given them pet names). They’d behave better if we left them on all the time, but that wastes a lot of energy and helium. Saving money is one thing, but helium is a precious, dwindling, and non-renewable resource, and unfortunately it’s by far the best thing for the job.

Cylinders of compressed 99.999% helium. Too good for party balloons.

Then it’s the turn of smaller bits of equipment, which are easy to overlook, but are no less important in getting good data. Elaborate mass spectrometers are all well and good, but if a lowly microbalance is out of calibration, you’ll get some very embarrassing errors further down the line. It also rarely fails, so weighing the 1 – 200mg checkweights on a Monday morning is usually a tangible and satisfying sign that all is well in the lab. Sometimes I do it just to make myself feel better.

It’s all about the standards.

The lab analyses all kinds of environmental samples for the stable isotopes of some important elements of life: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur. And the ‘stable’ in stable isotope means exactly that—these are the non-radioactive forms of an element. For example, we do everyday carbon-12 and heavier carbon-13, but not radioactive carbon-14. Stable isotopes are useful as built-in tracers and their slight differences can give useful information about environmental processes.

Isotopes of carbon

Most interest in the lab comes from LEC research staff and students, but we also work with external customers and occasionally undergrads. Having such a diverse range of users means a diverse range of samples—it could be anything from rock samples to the contents of fish intestines. This week we’re analysing marine invertebrates for the University of Bangor—a medley of little crustaceans, sea urchins, snails, and worms. They look macabre in their test tubes of ethanol, but are soon processed into a uniform and slightly stinky pink powder ready for weighing.

A carnival of crustaceans!

And the weighing is a fiddly, time-consuming job. It involves spending hours in front of a microbalance, portioning out a few mg of sample into tin capsules, then folding down into nice, neat parcels the size of a red lentil. I do my fair share, but we encourage the student or customer to do it. Not everyone enjoys it, but for me it’s a good opportunity to keep my hands busy while keeping an eye on a general meeting, or an ear on a good podcast. It’s almost Zen.

The weighing room: a haven for some, a tomb for others.

There’s a lot more to keeping a busy lab running, and I have side roles with cryogenic safety, compressed gases and DSE, but hopefully the above gives an idea of the large number of things that need to go right between a sample and a data point.

And finally, the data. Isotastic!

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