Acid bath

If you don't like the idea of particles being shot at your ashes, they can be dissolved in acid instead. Using a method developed at the University of Tennessee, samples of your ashes are digested on a hotplate in nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide.




Your digested remains are then processed using an "inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer" and the machine's output compared with that produced from cremains known to be genuine. The university has been analysing ashes produced by incinerating medical school cadavers to establish the range of element concentrations in genuine cremains.