Maybe 110um, depending on settings.
The coolest piece of tech I use at work? One of those 8-tipped electric pipettes. It makes me feel like a real scientist.
I haven’t needed to use the DNA sequencer yet, but my friend has shown me how it works. It’s pretty cool.
Fluorescence microscopes. We have a fancy new sonogram and a bunch of complicated behavior testing stuff, but a plain old fluorescence scope, preferably with a video camera, is by far the most fun thing I’ve ever messed with.
I mean, you can look at cells! And they light up all kinds of colors! Then you can take pictures of them and do whatever you want- I made a Christmas card template last year that was a photo of a bunch of astrocytes in a tree pattern. I can easily lose track of a whole afternoon just taking pictures, and now, with videos and time lapse captures, I can actually watch how cells move. It’s awesome.
When I was in the theatre department, we had a video camera hooked up to a mac that was programmable to do things when certain portions of the view area had motion in them.
When I worked at the genetics lab I got to use the PCR machine that multplies DNA, run electrophoresis gels, and run the sequencing machine.
At a custom shoe store I got to scan people’s feet into the computer with a laser scanner and save them as 3D models.
A few people have beaten me to the coolest piece of technology we have here - a DNA sequencer. (Which sits unused for surprisingly long amounts of time considering what it cost - jeez, I’m tempted to try sequencing my own genome in the instrument’s spare time 
.)
Incidentally, do you work with that specific one or those in general? I ask because I used to work at NAS Pt. Mugu a while back. Never played with any of the rockets, but was involved with the (former) sewage ponds - considerably less cool 
.
My dev team has access to 3 blade servers, for performance testing, and to reproduce certain issues that require heavy resources. Each blade server is equipped with dual quad-core processors (2.6 GHz each core), and 16GB of RAM.
Sometime in the next 6 months, we’ll be getting access to a few more. These things kick my ass.
Ah, that thing paid my salary for many years. I’ve seen it being built down in the Oklahoma City Works, and even helped improve its quality many years ago. And before I bought Sun workstations for my group (back when rcp was very cool) we did our computing on 3B20, the processor that originally went inside the 5E.
My Sony 52 inch LCD computer monitor (also TV) it is magnificent.
I have clearance to walk into a dusty tent at the other end of the compound. I don’t get to push the buttons but can watch as they:
Determine the GPS coordinates for a bad guy’s bedroom window; and then choose to have a 500 lb, 100 lb, or 15 lb HE warhead arrive in minutes.
Then I go outside and watch the launch/firing.
I believe that is one of the ones I work on (it looks like a Castor IVB) though I think the picture is a flight out of Barking Sands on PMRF; definitely not PMNAS.
Stranger
I’ve played with stuff at work that I can’t talk about, but my current job is unclassified. Right now I work with these bad boys. Space-age polymers, blue-tooth, the works. Things of beauty, and so on the cutting edge that it’s amazing to see the results. I can read Angelina Jolie’s tattoos from 35,000 feet with these babies. And we have special clearance to operate them beyond the safety limits to a whopping 30cm resolution. Such fine resolution requires special wet film (no digital for us–that’s so yesterday).
I think Chronos and Stranger are in a tie for the lead, btw.
Good Og, is this a cool thread - I love the overall Geek Index™ on the SDMB.
For folks like Chronos, **Stranger **and Angua, amongst many others - any chance you might start an “Ask the…” thread where you provide an overview of both the tool/tech and your role?? I would love as much of a guided tour as you could provide to what you experience, if that makes sense…
I have nothing to add that is even in the same universe as the bulk of you guys. I guess I would point out that playing an old electric guitar through an old tube amp is cool in its own way (and those of you who stumble across my posts - feel free to mock me for making every thread about guitars ;)). But you know how one of the cool things about tech is how closely it can provide a true-feedback-natural-feeling responsiveness? So you attain a level of transparency using the tool/tech and focus straight on the task at hand? Well, there is clearly an electronic component to a guitar rig, along with feedback to control!
Does that count?
Eh, well, I work with a 20 year old cash register. The ol’ workhorse has paid for itself a 100 times over by now.
COOL!
I want one.
Seriously.
1 meter sampling of ocean currents along a 4 km line. With temperature.
Oh yeah? Check your PMs.
Sure. Give me a couple of weeks though as things are totally manic with end of contract stuff, and I’ll be happy to start a “Ask the radio and X-ray astrophysicist who has started to dabble in the theory” thread.
You’re right - I saw “Pacific Missile…” in the filename and thought Pacific Missile Test Center rather than Pacific Missile Range Facility. What is it with the military and almost indistinguishable names?
Anyway, here’s hoping you got to do some field visits to Barking Sands (with requisite stops at the beach, of course. 
)
Not terribly high-tech, but during my residency I got to use a band saw to cut horse heads in half.
I use a scanning electron microscope (SEM) on a regular basis. (There’s one in my lab.) It’s pretty cool.
But the coolest thing in our lab is a forward looking infrared (FLIR) digital video camera. It’s a high-end model; I think it was around 80K or so. It’s fun.
I work at a robotics R&D company. I don’t know where to start.