The Centre for Applied Planetary MIneralogy (CAPM), located in the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum, is used to analyze the physical and chemical properties of objects in the Earth Sciences collections, as well as inorganic throughout the museum. 

Our lab has a Bruker D* Advance Powder X-ray Diffractometer (pXRD) with Davinci Design and a LynxEye detector. A finely crushed powder of -25 mg or more can be analyzed on this instrument to create a spectrum. To identify the sample, we combine this spectrum with knowledge of sample chemistry and match the pattern to one in our database.