2023 Technical Division Student Poster Contest: FMD 2023 Technical Division Undergraduate Student Poster Contest
Program Organizers: TMS Administration
Monday 5:30 PM
March 20, 2023
Room: Exhibit Hall G
Location: SDCC
SPU-1: Cultural Heritage Science: Authentication of Native American Artwork via Materials Characterization and Forensic Analysis: Cody Marshall1; Ava Knutson1; Jon Kellar1; Grant Crawford1; 1South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
The American Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 is a federal law that prohibits the sale of Native American art from a non-Native American. Since this law was enacted there have only been a handful of prosecutions across the country, even though fraudulent Native American art continues to be sold in large quantities. The focus of this research was to determine the authenticity of pieces of potentially fraudulent Native American artwork/artifacts through materials characterization and forensic analysis. Pieces investigated included a) Lakota bustle, b) ledger drawings, c) pipe tomahawk, and d) buffalo horn headdress. Each piece was subject to relevant materials characterization (e.g., micro-computed tomography, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) and interpreted contextually within the Native American culture with the given time period to help ascertain potential authenticity.
SPU-2: Investigation of High Entropy Precursor Powder Synthesis for Transparent Ceramic Synthesis: Marlena Alexander1; Kaden Anderson1; Chuck Melcher2; Mariya Zhuravleva2; 1University of Tennessee Knoxville; 2Scintillation Materials Research Center
Transparent polycrystalline ceramics have been developed for various scintillation applications including nuclear nonproliferation and medical imaging. Successful synthesis of these transparent ceramics may be influenced by precursor particle size and morphology. High entropy oxides show promise in enhancing functional properties of scintillating materials; however, the high entropy nature requires special considerations to synthesize homogeneous powders. In this work, high entropy rare earth aluminum garnet precursor powders are synthesized by a relatively fast, low cost, and low temperature aqueous synthesis method where polymer choice and quantity are varied to study the effects on the precursor powders. We find through X-ray diffraction measurements that polymer choice affects phase formation. Through scanning electron microscopy measurements, we find that powders synthesized with higher quantities of the polymer yield submicron particles that appear promising for densification into transparent ceramics.