Question: What are some ways to collect dust or particulate samples for analysis?

When we were in WI @gretchengehrke, @mathew, and I were visiting some friends and we took a sample from a window at their house. The house window was facing a frack sand mine and appeared to be covered with a thin dust layer. We used a small razor and scraped the window in a downward fashion onto a slide. Since we just wanted to look at the materials that came off of the window under a microscope, we weren't worried about the sample size, contamination or anything like that. Made it pretty simple. I know @kgradow1 did something neat with tape on a rock recently as well.

One idea from @dswenson that came from the open call yesterday was to use materials like sticky yellow flytraps like these

@DavidMack posted on sticky pads a while back on the #particle-sensing page:

Essentially tape, sticky pads have the advantage of capturing a record of actual particles that can be analyzed later. They can be scanned and digitized for standardized readings. More can be found on the Sustainable Aggregates website.

This post walks through collecting a sample, and some examples. They also reference this resource for collecting dust samples: http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/dust/dust.htm

Thanks @partsandcrafts