Facilities & Equipment
State-of-the-art equipment for cutting-edge research
The Physical Sciences Department maintains state-of-the-art equipment for conducting high-quality field and laboratory research.
Major Field Equipment
- Laser In-Situ Scattering and Transmissometry (LISST)
- Sea-bed hydraulic flume
- Meteorological station with a precipitation collector for low-level organic contaminants
- High-volume air samplers
- Rotating drum surface-microlayer sampler
- Bottom-boundary-layer tetrapod systems for measuring bed stress, waves and currents, sediment resuspension, and bed-level changes.
Field Instrumentation
- Tide gauges
- Current meters
- Conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) profilers
- Fluorometers
- Dissolved oxygen (DO) meters
- Fathometers
- Dual-frequency side-scan sonars
- Variable frequency sub-bottom profiling systems
- Directional wave gauges
- Turbidity sensors
- Acoustic doppler current profilers (ADCP)
- Kasten and box corers
Microwave and GPS navigation systems are maintained by the department for accurate positioning of research vessels.
Laboratory Instrumentation
- Europa isotope ratio mass spectrometer
- Alpkem flow Solution 4 Autoanalyzer
- Shimadzu TOC-5000 Carbon analyzer
- Antek NOx analyzer
- Microwave-assisted solvent extraction system
- Large-capacity, refrigerated, programmable centrifuge
- Ultra-cold (-80° C) freezers
- Fisons EA1108 CHNS-O analyzer
- UV/Vis spectrophotometer
- Gas chromatographs with flame ionization and electron-capture detectors
- 2 quadrupole mass spectrometers
- Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectrophotometer
- EDS system with full SEM imaging capabilities
- Powder X-ray diffractometer
- Nitrogen adsorption surface area and porosity analyzer
- CHNSO elemental analyzer
- High-performance liquid chromatograph with UV absorbance and liquid
- Scintillation detectors
- 2 laboratory flumes (recirculating and annular)
- 5 intrinsic germanium gamma spectrometers
- 8-channel alpha spectroscopy system
- X-ray radiography unit
- Sedigraph automatic particle analyzer
- Rapid sediment analyzer
Computers & Networking
Computer facilities range from laptop units for field use to work stations supporting LANs (local area networks) to the institute-wide network. Computer users have ready access to external networks. Pentium-PC, UNIX, and MacIntosh systems are supported by the Institute's computer center. The numerical modeling group is supported by a multi-processor Dec/Compaq/HP ES40.