The Rapid Scan system of automated reflectance microscopy, under development at The Pennsylvania State University, is a line scanning device capable of characterizing the pyrite content of a coal. The system combines a sophisticated software base with standard hardware components to provide flexibility in analytical format. As a prepared coal sample is moved automatically beneath the microscope objective, reflectance values from adjacent 2 ~m squares are sampled by the photomultiplier tube. These values are stored in computer memory for subsequent calculation of the volumetric proportion of pyrite in the sample. Simultaneously, the Rapid Scan also accumulates a distribution of pyrite chord lengths. In a modification ABSTRACT. . .
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