• Question: What is the most flammable piece of equipment that you have ever used?

    Asked by 11wiloma to Marcus, James, Martin, Rob, Suzanne on 14 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by mikeyswann101.
    • Photo: Marcus Gallagher-Jones

      Marcus Gallagher-Jones answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Hmm good question I use ethanol (Pure Alcohol) fairly regularly and that is pretty flammable. Nothing that combusts spontaneously on contact with air though. My work just isn’t that flammable I’m afraid as for my experiments to work things need to be very stable. The XFEL (X-ray Free Electron Laser) that I work with has been used recently to heat a sheet of Aluminium to over 1 million Kelvin (Just under 1 million degrees celcius) so it’s pretty hot stuff if you’ll pardon the pun.

    • Photo: Suzanne McEndoo

      Suzanne McEndoo answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Paper. Sadly my job doesn’t let me play with explody things.

      We did do a quantum physics circus show with fire juggling though, so that’s probably the closest anything I’ve worked on has been to flammable stuff.

    • Photo: Martin Zaltz Austwick

      Martin Zaltz Austwick answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      I’ve worked with some quite big blowtorches in my time, for sealing off glass tubes for chemical experiments.

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