Question: what equitment do you need for your experiments

Katie Pickering answered on 10 Nov 2014:

Great question. It depends what research I am doing at the time. I have conducted body composition analysis research in the past where I used a Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) machine. This machine is a 2D X-ray machine that scans the body and measures bone denisty, muscle mass and fat mass. It can detect if a person is at risk of developing or has osteoporosis. It also tells us if athletes injuries are recovering as we can detect any muscle imbalances they may have. It gives you a really cool print out of your own skeleton and you can see the outline of muscle and fat on your body too.
If we are exercise testing in the labs we will require either a treadmill or a bike, a metalyser which is a computer system that we hook the participants up to via breathing aparatus and it tells us the percentages of oxygen and carbon dioxide they utilise whilst exercising. We use heart rate monitors a lot. If we require physiological response data we may take blood samples via cannulation then analyse through various machines, or put in the -80degree freezer to save before transporatation to specialist blood analysts up in Scotland! We also have an environmental chamber here that if people are taking part in expeditions or competing in extreme and varying climates they can use it to simulate the conditions and prepare their body for that weather condition.
If I am data collecting in the field some of the equipment is available in smaller forms to take away.
If I am working in intervention settings I may be handing out questionnaires to people or interviewing them individually or in groups. My work is quite varied which is what I love about it. Every research project is very different.