Anne: As part of an NSF-funded project aiming to devise and test methods for improving stable isotope content understanding amongst geoscience undergraduates, Anne’s collaborators (with a little help from Anne) developed a lab module on Rayleigh distillation. This module can be used in an environmental geochemistry class or oceanography class, and is adaptable into a variety of formats (with or without isotope instrumentation, or even just as a data analysis exercise). We’ve written it up so that others can adopt or adapt the technique, and our paper is appearing in the December 2015 issue of Oceanography. Watch this space in the coming weeks for everything you need to use the exercise in your classroom.
Griffith, E., Ortiz, J. and Jefferson, A. 2015. HANDS-ON OCEANOGRAPHY. Mimicking the Rayleigh Isotope Effect in the Ocean. Oceanography. 28 (4). http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/28-4_griffith.html