How much is the most expensive piece of equipment you use

Question: How much is the most expensive piece of equipment you use
- Keywords:
  technology,
  work
Asked by to Daren, Lynne, Phillip, Simon on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
- Simon Redfern answered on 16 Jun 2014:
  
  We are all using experiments set up at the Diamond synchrotron, which is a huge science laboratory in the Oxfordshire countryside. It is an electron accelerator that produces X-rays that we use for our experiments. The Diamond synchrotron cost about £300,000,000 to build. Quite expensive!
- Lynne Thomas answered on 16 Jun 2014:
  
  Following on from what Simon has said, Diamond works a bit like a high powered microscope but we have to use X-rays instead of visible light if we want to see what atoms and molecules look like. The same kind of X-rays that you have when you get your broken bones X-rayed but much more powerful so that it would burn through you if you put your hand in the way! If we worked in industry, we would be charged around £10,000 a day to use a single machine on the synchrotron but because we work for Universities, we can apply for time and it gets funded through Government funding. So we are very lucky to have something like this in the UK that we can get access to!
- Daren Fearon answered on 16 Jun 2014:
  
  Diamond ofcourse! As Simon and Lynne have said it was very expensive to build and run. Fortunately, as I work for a university we don’t have to pay. However, we have to submit proposals that are reviewed by other scientists and they decide how much time we should get based on these proposals. Diamond is one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment of its kind in the whole world! We should be very proud to have it here in the UK and need to make sure it is well funded so it can continue to carry out the excellent research that goes on there!
- anon answered on 16 Jun 2014:
  
  I have to agree with the others – Diamond is a ridiculously large piece of kit. Some chemicals I use are really expensive too – the can be about £100 for 1 gram of material. A “fun” game we like to play in the lab when we’re bored is to guess how much random things cost. A set of accurate scales can be well over £1000. We’re just really lucky we get to use these things at universities.
- Phillip Manning answered on 17 Jun 2014:
  
  Possibly the Diamond Synchrotron too…as it is a very large and expensive science machine, but oh so useful!

Question: How much is the most expensive piece of equipment you use

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