The Luminescence Dating Laboratory consists of four
connected rooms totaling 800 square feet in area. The wet chemistry sample
preparation room is entered through a small ante-room which prevents the
accidental exposure of samples to outside light. The wet chemistry lab has a
fume hood rated for hydrofluoric acid, a Jouan C412 centrifuge, a band saw with
diamond blade, ovens, sieves, balances and other equipment used in TL and OSL
sample preparation. A second, connected room houses three Daybreak 583 alpha
counters and a 6-seater Littlemore alpha irradiator with six calibrated
Americium-241 alpha sources used in the dating of fine-grained sediments. There
is also a multiple sample beta irradiator used to give large radiation doses to
samples thus freeing up time on our TL/OSL Reader. This second room connects to
a third room where our RISŲ TL/OSL Reader (TL-DA-15) is housed. The Reader is
equipped with an Amersham Sr-90, 40 mCi beta source providing a dose of 0.96
Gy/s. It has a blue LED excitation unit (for quartz) in combination with an
infrared solid-state laser diode delivering up to 500 mW/cm
2 (for
feldspars and screening contaminated quartz samples). In this room there is
also a lead-shielded, low-level RISŲ beta multicounter (RISŲ GM-25-5) used to
measure beta irradiation from soils surrounding samples being dated. In the
Geomorphology Laboratory of the Department of Geography we have access to a
Gamma counter giving our lab the ability to measure alpha, beta and gamma
radiation from soil samples thus increasing the accuracy of our estimates of
annual radiation dose to samples we are dating.
