Case Studies

The ability to measure single photons of light is gaining importance in emerging research applications from space-earth communications with weak laser light sources, to event counting in biochemical microscopy important for tissue sample analysis, to silicon chip failure diagnostics using light emitted from transistors. All the...

Ultrafast electronics must be manufactured with high precision. Many of the features of complex nanoscale circuits are built up on wafers using EUV masks, which can develop cracks, leading to circuit defects. As electronics get smaller and operate at higher frequencies, there is a need for more accurate ways of checking for suc...

Any recycled product has the potential to harbour various forms of contamination from its previous use, but this is particularly true of steel, which is retrieved from a huge variety of settings. Inadequate monitoring of radioactivity levels in recycled metals can have major consequences for public health – for example, in 1982...

Science and engineering students and many industrial process and quality control professionals require a grounding in best measurement practices and the calculation of measurement uncertainties, in order to produce accurate, comparable data to inform decision making. This knowledge often forms part of university syllabuses but ...

The oceanography community most commonly measures ocean salinity using the ‘Practical Salinity Scale’, which is based on comparing seawater electrical conductivity with the conductivity of a commercially available standard solution made from North Atlantic seawater. This salinity is then used to calculate other properties, like...

The instruments used on board satellites to make measurementsof key climate variables are calibrated prior to launch to ensure their accuracy. However, instrument performance can change during launch into space, and once in flight instruments operate in a very different environment to that in which they were calibrated. Changes...