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My research involves the characterization
of new minerals, minerals which had never before been found.
It is surprising that as long as mineralogy
has been around-- since the ancient Greeks,
really-- that we're still finding new minerals,
and today, we're finding actually
more new minerals than we've ever found before.
More than 100 new minerals are discovered, characterized,
every year, and I'm very much involved in that.
This cabinet right here contains many of the things
that I've described or I'm still working on.
Here, for example, is a drawer full of minerals
that I'm working on from a deposit
right here in California, not too far from the town of Baker.
It includes a whole host of interesting associations.
These minerals are mostly lead copper tellurides--
or tellurates actually-- and really quite exciting.
Every drawer here in this cabinet
has another array of interesting new minerals.
People wonder-- they ask me, in fact--
where do you find these new minerals?
In fact, I don't find most of them myself.
Other people do, and they send them to me.
If they can't identify them-- for me to
do the work to determine what they are
and whether they in fact are new.
Of course, the work involves more than just
looking at specimens like this or under the microscope
because mostly they are microscopic.
It involves the use of some more sophisticated equipment, which
I've got here in the other room.
This is my primary research tool.
This is an x-ray diffractometer, and this is something
that we use both to identify minerals
as well as to study their internal structure-- how
the atoms within them combine to make them what they are.
The specimen you see on here is right at the end
of the little spindle there.
You cannot actually see it once you look perhaps up
at the monitor there because it only is maybe a few 10ths
of a millimeter across.
Right now, I'm running a powder diffraction
on it, which is how we identify it.
It produces a pattern on the screen behind you,
which is read by a computer.
And from that pattern we can actually
compare it to other patterns of all known compounds
and determine what it is.
Of course, if we determine that it doesn't match anything,
then there's a chance that we have a new mineral.
There are many other tests that we
have to run on the composition, for example.
This cannot give you the composition itself.
We've got other tools for studying that.
In fact, we have a scanning electron microscope
with an energy dispersive analyzer
elsewhere in the museum that I use
for studying the chemical composition.
Another technique that we can employ
using the same instrument is single crystal
x-ray diffraction.
And from the data that we get from that,
we can determine where the atoms are located within the crystal
structure.
And that really is what defines what the mineral is.
What those atoms are and how they fit together
determine what any crystalline substance is.
Here on the bulletin board are diagrams
showing just some crystal structures that I've worked on.
All of these are minerals.
Some of them, probably the majority of them actually,
are brand new minerals.
Minerals with names such as joteite-- actually,
properly pronounced, "ho-te-ite."
Here's ofurate, wernerbauerite, named
after actually the first professor
I had in crystallography way back when,
and many other interesting minerals
with structures that never cease to amaze me.
This is really part of the sense of discovery
that I feel when I work on new minerals,
is really seeing for the first time--
how they are put together and when you determine a crystal
structure, like this one here.
It's never before been seen either
in a natural material or a synthetic material.
You really get a sense of awe.
The way that this one is put together
is really quite remarkable without getting
into greater details.
The research that we do here is really the heart of the museum.
What people see on display, what you
see as you go through the drawers
is obviously a big part of what a museum is,
but the core of a natural history museum
is the research that goes on behind the scenes.
The staff of experts in many different disciplines who
are working to redefine their sciences,
to find new organisms, to find new compounds,
to add to scientific knowledge-- that's
what makes working in a natural history museum so exciting.
Of course, I have to say I still get a real sense of excitement
just walking through the gallery when
I see a group of kids looking in the display case
and pointing out a mineral and saying, come look at this one.
Look how neat this one is.
Of course, behind the scenes, here I
am looking at things that they will probably never know
about-- fairly esoteric compounds, but ones which
perhaps some day could change everyone's lives.
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