PXRF

Monmouth College acquired a portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer thru a combination of LeSuer funding (~$20K) and a PittConn Grant (~$10K). The grant proposal can be found here.

Introduction

The technique of x-ray fluorescence (XRF) is outlined nicely on Wikipedia. The fundamentals are, you use high energy x-rays to eject core electrons from an element and when electrons in higher orbitals drop in to fill these once occupied orbitals, they emit/fluoresce lower energy x-rays which are then detected. The emission chart below is taken from Wikipedia and showns the emission frequencies for many element.