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How does coning and quartering reduce the size of a particulate sample?
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Viking 1's sample scoop, poised to extract material from the surface of Mars.
Coning and quartering is a manual technique used in analytical chemistry to reduce the volume of a particulate sample while preserving its representative character.12
The process follows these steps:
- Formation: The original sample is gathered and formed into a cone-shaped pile.2
- Flattening: The cone is flattened into a disk shape.2
- Division: The disk is divided into four equal quadrants.2
- Selection: Two opposite quadrants are selected and combined to form a new, smaller pile.2
- Iteration: This sequence of coning, flattening, and quartering is repeated until the material is reduced to the desired size for a laboratory sample.2
This method ensures that the final, smaller sample remains representative of the original bulk material by systematically discarding portions in a way that accounts for potential heterogeneity within the pile.2