• Question: If you could have any piece of scientific equipment, what would you have?

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      Asked by 398antf23 to Daniela ?, ☣ Danna, Jonny, Juan, Lindsay on 20 Jun 2016.
      • Photo: Juan Ortiz

        Juan Ortiz answered on 20 Jun 2016:

        In the lab we have a special plastic bead with a magnet inside that we put into the flasks and beakers and then we put those flasks on a device that has another magnet attached to an engine and can also heat the beaker. In other words, this can be used to stir liquids while heating them. I would like to have something similar at home and use it for cooking, so I won’t have to stir the food myself, the machine would do if for me! This device is called magnetic stirrer.

      • Photo: Lindsay Robinson

        Lindsay Robinson answered on 20 Jun 2016:

        There’s an area of science called x-Ray crystallography. It can pretty much tell you the structure of the different molecules you make. It’s much more complicated than that but if we had an instrument that did that in the lab, it would be great!

      • Photo: Jonathan Hunter

        Jonathan Hunter answered on 20 Jun 2016:

        I’d like a SEM (scanning electron microscope) please!
        It’s like a light microscope but uses electrons so can see things which are much smaller. Some of the images that you can see with them are really beautiful!

      • Photo: Danna Gifford

        Danna Gifford answered on 21 Jun 2016:

        I’d really like to have a device called a fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS), which is a device that can sort individual cells based on size or whether they produce a certain colour of fluorescent protein. This would let me do experiments where I can grow multiple different bacteria in the same tube, and sort them out into different groups afterward.

      • Photo: Daniela Lobo

        Daniela Lobo answered on 21 Jun 2016:

        I would get a microscope. Or one of those resin columns used to clean biological samples (the technique is called HPLC) – when the life-time of the column is finished, it’s super fun to take it apart piece by piece and try to find the super tiny cute ruby inside most of them!

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