I'm a little surprised no-one has touched on the subject of employing the use of a compass needle as a semi-diagnostic tool in the field.The late Dr Alex Bevan of WAM introduced this to me when I first started hunting meteorites in the early 1990's and I have carried a compass in my field kit ever since.The sensitivity of an old fashioned compass needle to a magnetic field is really quite telling and of course non-interfering.It's surprising the different reactions when examining for instance, two West Australian Eucrites, Millbillillie and Camel Donga (the latter of which has a. 2-3% iron content). Having said all this I do appreciate that an old fashioned compass would not necessarily be carried by all in this modern era of GPS navigation which first became operational with a full constellation of 24 satellites from about 1993 and later available via cellphone from about 1999. As an aside and given the availability and use of modern phone/camera/gps devices, it would be nice to see more data captured and shared from DCA's , although I'm not holding my breath in expectation!
Regards, Keith H. This issue is not new. Iâve not read the article, but Iâm willing to > bet that it does not address the fundamental problem, being that magnets > are cheap and do provide useful albeit subjective information. Of course > education and motivation are key but until someone comes up with a better > alternative, magnets will never go away. There is a small portable meter > that tests for magnetic susceptibility built as a proof of concept (shown > to me by Jerome Gattacceca), but it is presently very expensive. If its > selling price can be brought down to ~$50 through volume manufacturing, > then we as a community will start making inroads, but will still take a > while and require significant effort to train and educate. > > > > Mendy > > > > From: Meteorite-list <meteorite-list-boun...@meteoritecentral.com> On > Behalf Of Paul via Meteorite-list > Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2023 9:19 PM > To: Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com > Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Leonard David FYI: damage hand magnets used > by amateurs do to meteorites (PDF of Preprint) > > > > David Leonard wrote: > >> Testing the damage hand magnets used by amateurs do to meteorites > >> https://phys.org/news/2023-04-magnets-amateurs-meteorites.html > > > > The paper is: > > > > Vervelidou, F., Weiss, B.P. and Lagroix, > > F., 2022. Hand magnets and the > > destruction of ancient meteorite magnetism. > > Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, > > p.e2022JE007464. > > > > PDF of preprint available at; > > https://d197for5662m48.cloudfront.net/documents/publicationstatus/100193/preprint_pdf/1778a5786893d0294c6efbeac6faf4b4.pdf > > > > Official abstract > > https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2022JE007464 > > > > Yours, > > > > Paul H. > > > > ______________________________________________ > Meteorite-list mailing list > Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com > https://pairlist2.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list > ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist2.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list