• Question: What is the most expensive piece of equipment you use?

    Asked by anon-240008 to Struan, Charlotte, Douglas, David on 16 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Douglas Bray

      Douglas Bray answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      I have used an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) which uses X-rays to determine the elemental composition.

    • Photo: Struan Simpson

      Struan Simpson answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      The facilities I visit to figure out the atomic structure of my materials cost millions of pounds to build, and each experiment you do on a particular instrument can cost up to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Other than that, I use an instrument to measure the electrical behaviour of my materials which I think also costs hundreds of thousands of pounds. I’m glad I’m not the one who has to buy these things!

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