• Question: what is your favourite piece of equipment, and why?

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sakshi Sharda

      Sakshi Sharda answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      My favourite equipment is the microscope. I love to see life under that, the beautiful structures, the intricacies ..it’s so fascinating. I once saw the formation of a tadpole from it’s egg (which is just one celled) under a microscope! It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, life in action!

    • Photo: Ian Stephenson

      Ian Stephenson answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I got a computer when I was a kid, and never looked back.

      It has 32Kb of RAM and ran at 2MHz. My laptop now as 8Gb of ram (250,000 times as much) and 2GHz (1,000,000 times faster – it probably cost less too!), but they’re still just as much fun.

      I love it because I can make things with it, just by typing. I loved building things with Lego for example, but there were always pieces you needed, or didn’t have enough of. On the computer you just make things out of thoughts!

    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Like Sakshi, I also think the microscope is amazing – without it we couldn’t see anything which isn’t visible to the naked eye, including blood cells and bacteria and this would have prevented many discoveries. It would also be very difficult to diagnose and treat many diseases – it’s a very important tool in most laboratories and hospitals!

      There’s also a piece of equipment called a mass spectrometer that charges particles and fires them to a detector. It’s used to find out what chemicals are and is now being used to identify bacteria that are making patients ill in a matter of minutes, meaning they can be treated much quicker – that’s pretty cool!

Comments