The Department has well-equipped laboratories, offices, conference rooms, and workshops, all situated on a park-like nine-acre campus in northwestern Washington, DC, which it shares with the Geophysical Laboratory. A new research building housing investigators of both departments was occupied in May 1990.

The Department's modern computing facilities are used in all areas of training and research. Its local area network provides a distributed computing environment with all computers having high-speed access to the Internat. The computer platforms include approximately 40 SUN workstations, a dozen Compaq alpha workstations, several Pentium-based PCs, and a variety of Apple MACs. Equipment exists for the production of computer-generated videos. Also available for use are half a dozen high-quality color printers, a high-resolution color scanner, a large Calcomp digitizer, and a large format color printer.

As well as having extensive commercially purchased instrumentation, DTM has a large number of unique instruments designed by the staff, including seismometers, strainmeters, mass spectrometers, a large radius ion probe, and image-tube spectrograph systems. Geochemical facilities include 2 thermal ionization mass spectrometers, a Triton multicollector and a DTM-built single collector, P54 and Axiom multicollector ICP-MS mass spectrometers with multiple sample introduction systems including a Cetac LSX-200 laser system, a Cameca 6F ion-probe, several clean wet chemistry laboratories for sample processing, and rock sample preparation and mineral separation equipment.

These instruments are used for a wide range of geochemical applications that require isotope ratio and trace element concentration measurements. Current research applications in the thermal and plasma ionization mass spectrometers include the analysis of Li, B, Mg, Sr, Ag, Nd, Hf, W, Os, Pb, U, Th and Ra isotopic compositions with isotope dilution concentration measurements of B, K, Rb, Sr, Pd, Ag, Cs, Ba, REE, Hf, PGEs, Re, Os, Pb, U, Th and Ra. The Cameca 6F ion-probe is used for a wide variety of applications where spatial resolution is critical, from trace element measurements on individual minerals and fluid/melt inclusions to isotopic measurements of C, O, Mg, Si, S, Ca, Ti and Fe in both terrestrial, meteoritic, and extra-solar materials. Currently under construction is an addition to the ion-probe that will use a 1 m radius magnet to provide additional dispersion to allow higher transmission at high mass resolution and the operation of a 5 detector ion collector system.

Additional facilities, including SEM, electron microprobe, and stable isotope mass spectrometers for sulfur, carbon, and oxygen, are available at the Geophysical Laboratory. The Department has well-equipped and well-staffed machine and electronics shops for the development and construction of new instruments.

DTM and the Geophysical Laboratory have a joint library, which contains 40,000 volumes (including journals, books, and maps) as well as a variety of electonic databases related to the various investigations of the two departments. Library staff provide reference assistance to researchers, conduct on-line literature searches, and arrange interlibrary loans of material from several major research libraries in the area.

The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and the Geophysical Laboratory are committed to a cleaner environment. All used electronics are recycled through an independent woman-owned company, certified by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the U.S. Green Building Council.

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