Fission track lab

The lab is equipped with a Leica DMR microscope with a drawing tube, a Kinetek computer-driven stage, a Calcomp digitzing tablet, and FT Stage software. A video camera is mounted on the triaxial head of the microscope, allowing a group of people to observe a slide simultaneously. At present, we are only analyzing apatites. However, we plan on analyzing zircons in the future. The University of Potsdam fission track group is directed by apl Prof. Edward Sobel. He studied basin analysis and apatite fission track analysis at Stanford University under the direction of Dr. Stephan Graham and Dr. Trevor Dumitru. His thermochronologic training continued with a postdoctoral scholarship in Clermont-Ferrand, where he studied ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar thermochronology with Dr. Nicolas Arnaud as well as analyzing apatites in the ETH Zurich FT lab with Dr. Diane Seward. In 1996 he came to Potsdam to establish the FT laboratory. In 2008, he spent 6 months learning details of the (U-Th-Sm)/He method at the University of Melbourne. Ed Sobel was formerly editor of OnTrack, a newsletter of the international fission track community published electronically twice a year. Many back issues of OnTrack are available here.