The Star Trek Scanner - arriving shortly at a Mars Rover near you..
Posted by Chris Samuel on Mar 8th, 2006
2006
Mar 8
Point and click identification courtesy of Raman Spectroscopy!
ABC Science Show - Mars Science Laboratory Saturday 4 March 2006
Bonner Denton has a demonstration he uses upstairs. He takes a bottle of Tylenol, a white plastic container and the pills are inside. You can shoot the Raman and a laser goes through that white plastic, it identifies the three parts of Tylenol and it tells you what the plastic is made out of. It works on leaves. I can identify the species of trees by shooting their leaves. I don’t think the biologists are aware of this yet.
Potentially very useful indeed..