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On 6/14/2010 10:47 AM, Invisible wrote:
> I should maybe point out that these mass spectrometers retail for
> approximately £250,000 *each*. (I.e., this machine is worth more than my
> _house_.)
Eh, one of the jigging setups I worked on cost about that much, but it's
huge, contains a lot of steel, and about 60 or so motors, drives and
associated hardware (relays, transformers, power supplies, pneumatic
valves, etc...)
--
~Mike
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On 6/14/2010 10:25 AM, nemesis wrote:
> do you understand the basics of humor? ;)
>
> in any case, I wouldn't be surprised they do... :)
>
Apparently not. My attempt at humor obviously failed. :)
I'll try not to be surprised when Sony comes out with the first portable
time machine that fits in your pocket, then.
--
~Mike
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On 6/15/2010 7:43 AM, Invisible wrote:
> "Hi, my name is Ben Fogle. I've rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, I've
> run across the Sahara Desert, and I've journeyed to the North Pole, but
> *nothing* could have prepaired me for this..."
>
> Wah. WaWAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAHHAHAHA!!
>
> And then we see pictures of Ben holding a very small person.
>
> "My my, we've had some sleepness nights with this one."
>
> Just then, his wife off-camera chips in with "Ben, we had a maternity
> nurse staying here until Thursday".
>
> How coincidental that this just happened to be on TV, eh?
Heh... Hmmm... what to make of that?
--
~Mike
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>> I should maybe point out that these mass spectrometers retail for
>> approximately £250,000 *each*. (I.e., this machine is worth more than my
>> _house_.)
>
> Eh, one of the jigging setups I worked on cost about that much, but it's
> huge, contains a lot of steel, and about 60 or so motors, drives and
> associated hardware (relays, transformers, power supplies, pneumatic
> valves, etc...)
The mass spectrometer requires 6 people to lift safely, so I guess
there's a lot of metal in it. It also contains vacuum pumps, which take
about 20 minutes to spin up / spin down. (And much, much longer than
that to actually pump down to a vacuum.) And it generates a couple of
kilovolts (but bugger all current) to ionise the sample...
...still not sure exactly why it's so expensive though. Probably design
time / production volume.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Heh... Hmmm... what to make of that?
One of the twats I went to school with became a father on Sunday.
There's pictures on Facebook now. Everybody is like "wow, so cute!" and
"congrats dude", but my first reaction was "wow, for somebody who just
GAVE BIRTH, his wife looks really good..."
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On 6/15/2010 1:57 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
> ...still not sure exactly why it's so expensive though. Probably design
> time / production volume.
>
Well, I'm sure the powerful electromagnet and the detector add to the
expense. Not to mention the serious design time to design a very high
gain, low noise amplifier.
--
~Mike
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On 6/15/2010 1:59 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>
>> Heh... Hmmm... what to make of that?
>
> One of the twats I went to school with became a father on Sunday.
> There's pictures on Facebook now. Everybody is like "wow, so cute!" and
> "congrats dude", but my first reaction was "wow, for somebody who just
> GAVE BIRTH, his wife looks really good..."
>
Yyyyeah ... I'm the one who made the comment (to my wife) that he friend
who just had a baby looked much better than she did when our child was
born. My wife had a C-Section, the other mother had the baby the normal
way.
It didn't go over terribly well. Though she jokes about it now.
--
~Mike
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>> ...still not sure exactly why it's so expensive though. Probably design
>> time / production volume.
>>
>
> Well, I'm sure the powerful electromagnet and the detector add to the
> expense. Not to mention the serious design time to design a very high
> gain, low noise amplifier.
I'm no expert, but I don't think a mass spectrometer actually requires a
particularly powerful magnet. (It's only throwing microscopic particles
around, after all.) The photomultiplier might be expensive; I don't know
how it works. The ADC is probably quite expensive as chips go (although
not hundreds of thousands of pounds, I wouldn't have thought).
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> One of the twats I went to school with became a father on Sunday.
>> There's pictures on Facebook now. Everybody is like "wow, so cute!" and
>> "congrats dude", but my first reaction was "wow, for somebody who just
>> GAVE BIRTH, his wife looks really good..."
>>
>
> Yyyyeah ... I'm the one who made the comment (to my wife) that he friend
> who just had a baby looked much better than she did when our child was
> born. My wife had a C-Section, the other mother had the baby the normal
> way.
>
> It didn't go over terribly well. Though she jokes about it now.
Heh. Reminds me of when the lady at work had twins. She's a regular bean
pole, so her walking around with twins was... comical? Maybe not for
her? It was like a giant melon with a person stuffed through it! LOL.
When she came back to work, she looked... exactly like she did before
she started. Bean pole. If anything, slightly thinner. The fat lady at
work was really ****ed off about that. ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On 6/15/2010 3:14 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> ...still not sure exactly why it's so expensive though. Probably design
>>> time / production volume.
>>>
>>
>> Well, I'm sure the powerful electromagnet and the detector add to the
>> expense. Not to mention the serious design time to design a very high
>> gain, low noise amplifier.
>
> I'm no expert, but I don't think a mass spectrometer actually requires a
> particularly powerful magnet. (It's only throwing microscopic particles
> around, after all.) The photomultiplier might be expensive; I don't know
> how it works. The ADC is probably quite expensive as chips go (although
> not hundreds of thousands of pounds, I wouldn't have thought).
>
Well, how powerful are the magnets that deflect the electrons in a CRT?
It has to be powerful enough to deflect the ions moving at the speed
they're moving enough so they land at different points on the detector
according to their mass.
Of course I could be (as I usually am) grossly wrong about that.
--
~Mike
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