• Question: Are you really careful while handeling your technology?

    Asked by Lekishan to Chris, Rebecca on 23 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Chris Armstrong

      Chris Armstrong answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      When handling anything the lab has bought I have the grace, balance, and dexterity of a Russian ballerina. However when its my own technology I throw it around without a care in the world.

      Then again my tech is worth like £300 max, the labs tech is worth much more…

    • Photo: Rebecca Dewey

      Rebecca Dewey answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Yes, absolutely! I need to take different amounts of care with different technological things though! I know that the computer that sits on my desk is easy to replace, and I know roughly how it works, and what I can get away with doing so as not to stop it from working.

      I use some very expensive technology to measure people’s brains: an MR scanner (magnetic resonance scanner) and a NIRS (near-infrared spectroscopy) machine.

      The MR scanner is pretty strong, I don’t need to be too careful not to stand on cables, and I can lean against it! It’s not fragile, but I can’t take *any metal at all* near it. Some metals are magnetic, such as iron. If I take anything with iron in it near the MR scanner, the scanner will pull the metal in towards it very fast. This would hurt anyone who got in the way, and it might damage the scanner if it hits it very fast. This will also mean that the scanner won’t work properly any more because the metal will change the pictures the scanner takes. Someone will need to remove the metal before they can take any more pictures, and if this is difficult (because the scanner is pulling on the metal very hard) then the big magnet that is in the scanner might need to be turned off and on again, which is a very expensive process and takes a couple of days, and a lot of electricity, work from clever people, and coolant to make the magnet cold. I wouldn’t be very popular!

      The NIRS machine is not affected by metal, I can use it while playing my mobile phone or holding a whole box of knives and forks if I wanted to! BUT, I need to be very careful with the cables that connect the NIRS machine to the cap that we attach to people’s heads while we’re measuring their brain. These cables are what we call optical fibres. An optical fibre is a thin rod of high-quality glass. As you know, glass is brittle. These cables are actually not as brittle as you would think – you can bend them a little bit – but you mustn’t bend them too quickly, or at too great an angle, or squash them, or anything! They are very fragile.

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