“I said, ‘I have this little cat, and I don’t know what metal it is. Is there a way to find out?’”
That’s when Aguiar learned about the DMSE Breakerspace, a materials characterization laboratory with equipment for learning about the composition, structure, and behavior of materials.
Technically, the Breakerspace, due to open on MIT’s Infinite Corridor this summer, didn’t exist at the time. But some of the equipment was already in the department, including a scanning electron microscope that examines objects at the atomic level. So with the help of DMSE’s Associate Professor James LeBeau, Aguiar put the cat under the microscope. It detected copper, but what they found near the patina surprised them.
“We see huge traces of titanium and oxygen, and we’re like, ‘What in the world is this?’” Aguiar said. “And Jim said, ‘Oh, it’s paint.’”
Titanium…
