• Question: No much dos cost all of the instruments in your lab

    Asked by LSB_2005 to Max, Francis on 8 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Francis Man

      Francis Man answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      It really depends on the equipment.
      We can get thousands of plastic tubes for maybe £20.
      The pipettes we use all the time cost a few hundred pounds each (they are simple but very precise pieces of equipment), and we have lots of them.
      On the other hand, a mass spectrometer (it gives the weight of molecules), a flow cytometer (to analyse cells one by one) or a very complex microscope can easily cost over £100,000.
      Research is expensive…

    • Photo: Max Jamilly

      Max Jamilly answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      A LOT! Like Francis said, some of the biggest machines like microscopes can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. We have to be really careful not to break them! Sometimes we share equipment with other labs because it’s too expensive to buy ourselves. Near my university there’s a special facility called a synchrotron which biologists (and other scientists) use to examine really tiny things. That cost almost £400 million! Scientists come from all over the world to use it.

Comments

  • Photo: Sian

    Sian commented on :

    We recent had a new lab built and kitting it out cost millions of pounds. Ours is a very unique lab in which we have to work in a sealed environment due to the toxicity of the work. So may not be the same for all labs. Some things you can buy of the shelf and are pretty standard not costing that much, other items may need to be specially made just for your needs therefore it really depends on what you are researching