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On 6th June we'll be opening a variety of laboratories to the public, showcasing our science and engineering expertise.
With over 40 of our labs open, find out what will be on show below. We'll also have refreshment areas on site.
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Important information
Autonomous transport relies on sensors to produce a computer view of the world. We will be demonstrating typical sensors deployed on road vehicles and running a live virtual test simulation incorporating our measurement techniques. (F3)
Greenhouse gases: we all know they’re bad for the environment, but how do we know what’s actually out there, and what impact is it having on climate change? Our scientists measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. Come and see the equipment used at NPL and around the UK and learn how greenhouse gas measurements have changed over recent years. Discover how we combine our atmospheric measurements with weather modelling data to quantify greenhouse gas emissions, and how this work can help towards meeting the UK’s 2050 net-zero emissions targets. Research in our Atmospheric Composition lab is focused on measurements of isotopes of greenhouse gases, with particular interest in methane. Isotopes are like fingerprints of methane (and other gases) which allow us to better understand sources and sinks of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Here we test Hera and Boreas II, two of our custom-built pre-concentrator instruments, both of which improve the precision and accuracy for isotopic measurements.
Electrical measurements are invisible helpers which enable us to live and enjoy modern-day life, yet many of us are unaware they are happening, all day every day, all around us. For things to function properly and safely (like sensors on cars, protecting drivers or pedestrians), electrical measurements need to be highly accurate. Visit our lab to discover how we create electricity out of quantum particles and how we ensure accurate measurements for in everyday life.
Visit our lab to discover how we characterise a wide range of magnetic materials and advanced magnetic sensors. Learn how our measurements are vital to the medical and space sectors, and enable the electric motors used in transport and renewable applications such as wind turbines. Come and view our superconducting magnet track and take part in some fun magnetics demonstrations!
Round-the-clock monitoring of the electricity grid is required to understand supply and demand and to help reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions. Our team of dedicated scientists will talk you through what’s needed to create a power network suitable for supporting the UK’s net-zero ambitions of the future and how our work is helping move in the right direction. We’ll show you first-hand how modern electronic devices can distort voltages and currents (some of which may surprise you!).
Nearly 1 in 2 people in the UK born in 1961 will have some form of cancer in their lifetime and every year there are more than 385,000 new cases diagnosed. Nearly a third of all these cancers are treated with radiotherapy; each radiation dose is traceable to NPL and must be accurately measured and precisely delivered to the cancer for the best treatment. This means that every single patient receiving radiotherapy in the UK is impacted by NPL’s clinical work. Radiotherapy treatments are often performed using linear accelerator machines – or linacs for short. Phantoms (solid plastic cubes or boxes filled with water) are often used with these linacs as a tool to mimic the treatment of a patient and to investigate the dose of ionising radiation they receive. Visit our lab to see our new clinical linac machine and to find out more about our role in the traceability chain, from hospital treatment to the NPL primary standards. See a real phantom and discover how we use them to enable patients to receive the correct dose of ionising radiation to the correct location. *Cancer statistics for the UK from CRUK.
NPL’s high-tech optical frequency combs, used to measure the frequencies of our optical atomic clocks, deliver ultrashort pulses of light that are manipulated to create a colourful spectrum spanning the whole rainbow! Get a closer look at these combs and learn how they link these colours to the ticking of NPL’s optical atomic clocks, the caesium fountain primary standard, and to the tick rate of other atomic clocks operated remotely around the world.
Self-driving transport relies on sensors to produce a computer view of the world. Come along to see our sensors in action – they are used in everything from road vehicles to ocean vessels. You’ll even get to see a live view from our Plymouth testbed.
Ever wondered how clean the air you breathe is? Come and meet the Atmospheric Environmental Science team to discover how we are measuring air pollution by checking pollution in the environment all around us. Find out how we collect air samples and test them to find even the teeniest, tiniest amounts of organic chemicals that can pollute the air!
Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) is a powerful imaging technique that lets us visualise biological structures at the nanometre scale – that’s one-millionth of one millimetre! TEM’s lets us look at the tiniest details of important structures and is vital tool for examining viruses, ensuring that cutting-edge cell and gene therapies work properly and developing vaccines. Visit our lab to learn how we look at and measure viruses and particles that are invisible to even the most powerful microscopes and discover how we ensure that healthcare treatments are both effective and safe.
Airborne particulates are a serious health issue and are responsible for 500,000 deaths per year within the EU. Visit our air quality and aerosol laboratory to learn how we measure airborne particles, carbon and metals, plus see a live reading of particle concentration in the lab, and how it changes over time.
In this lab we provide world-leading metrology in ocean acoustics, supporting marine conservation, offshore energy, national security and the marine technology industry. Visit our open water tanks to find out how we measure underwater sound accurately and how we are developing new techniques to help protect our environment. Take part in our underwater sound quiz and observe our sound absorbing bubble curtain demonstration!
Have you ever wondered how it’s possible to call a friend or relative on the other side of the world and have a conversation as clear as day? Or what about how submarines find their way underwater? Or even how satellites manage to predict the weather correctly (most of the time!)? It’s all down to antennas and aerials and how they speak to each other. Come and visit NPL’s extrapolation range and see for yourself how we measure the performance of radio frequency and microwave antennas and aerials. Meet the team and discover how we use our anechoic chamber to measure antennas for everything from mobile phone base stations and RADAR, through to communications and earth observation satellites.
NPL Training enables metrology apprentices to gain the technical knowledge, practical experience and the wider skills needed for their future careers. Our laboratory is nestled among a whole range of science laboratories that help to make our training come alive. Our own teaching laboratory enables hands-on practice with high-specification instruments, and demonstrations of the important principles of metrology.
The SI metre is the length standard for the UK. As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Metre Convention in 2025, visit our laboratory to see the metre lasers used to realise it today, and take a sneak peek at the new digital-ready metre realisation lasers that measure length in terms of the wavelength of light.
See a display of replica artefacts covering the history of distance measurement, from ancient cubits through to the metre bar allocated to the UK on the signing of the metre convention 150 years ago. Learn how length measurements can be made at the picoscale by counting atoms using X-ray interferometers and silicon amphitheatre structures.
Accurate, resilient timekeeping can make the difference between making a trade or losing it, winning gold or silver in the Olympics and thousands of other uses in computing and technology. The NPL caesium fountain clock is one of the most accurate long-term timekeepers in the world and is used to define the globally standardised timescale. Come and find out how we use lasers and atoms to define the unit of time, the second, and see a caesium clock in action for yourself.
The NPL infrared thermal imaging team use their high-tech cameras to measure temperatures for all sorts of things, such as testing satellites before launching into space, monitoring nuclear waste for overheating and detecting diabetic ulcers early, so there is time for intervention. Visit the thermal imaging laboratory for a chance to measure your own body temperature and make a masterpiece on your skin using ice as a paintbrush. You can even use our infrared cameras to see right through what appears opaque to your eyes.
Our scientists use something called luminescence thermometry to make remote, accurate surface temperature measurements using the visible light emitted by ceramic materials called phosphors. Visit our lab to see how we measure temperature with a machined called a spectrometer, and a camera to track the colour change of light. Discover how we apply the principles of this technique to make measurements traceable to the national standards to ensure that measurements remain consistent the world over. Try out our equipment yourself and make a temperature measurement using nothing but visible light (even under water!).
We capture thousands of ultra high-resolution digital images to detect defects and measure critical changes in structures like tunnels, nuclear waste stores and drainage culverts. This helps engineers keep these structures safe and prevent nasty accidents by fixing things on time. Come and see our railway tunnel inspection machine in action during our live scans of a mock section of tunnel. Plus – if you’ve ever wondered what the inside of a tunnel looks like in HD you’ll have the chance to check out our huge panoramic prints in detail – see if you can spot the faults!
The NPL apprenticeship programme offers bright young people with a passion for science, engineering and IT the chance to earn while they learn. Come and have a chat with some of our apprentices to find out how they’re shaping their careers and what it’s like to work at NPL.
We are looking for STEM graduates with a real passion for tackling some of the biggest challenges in industry, energy, the environment and healthcare. Come and chat with our Early Careers team if you’re interested in hearing about our Graduate Programme.
At NPL, we believe that diversity and inclusion are critical to our vision as an organisation and in fulfilling our role as the UK’s National Metrology Institute. Come read about the aims of our Stronger Together Everyone Matters campaign, test your perceptions with some thought experiments and try out the neurodiversity kit we offer to our colleagues.
Come and find out how our gas metrology team prepares gas mixtures, known as reference materials. Our team will talk you through why these are so important in everyday interactions that we take for granted, such as ensuring that fuel is safe to put in your car or heating system or that the medical equipment used in hospitals meets safety standards. Try your hand at being an NPL scientist by making your own balloon gas standard using gravimetric methods.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to discover a cure or treatment for a disease? How do we know what works, what doesn’t and how treatments truly affect our cells? Come and meet the team in the multiscale biomicroscopy lab to see how we are using cutting-edge optical and computational light microscopy to measure the properties of cells and multicellular systems – helping the health and life science sectors carry out important research into biological systems and diagnose and treat diseases. Try your hand at being an NPL scientist - see if you can look at cells using one of our fluorescence microscopes.
Join us in marking a significant milestone – 10 years of the PostGraduate Institute for Measurement Science (PGI), a pioneering collaboration between NPL, the University of Strathclyde and the University of Surrey. The PGI is dedicated to driving a step change in industrially relevant postgraduate research and training, helping to develop a highly skilled, next-generation workforce in measurement science. Come and meet our talented postgraduate researchers, discover their groundbreaking work and explore how we’re shaping the future of measurement science.
Throughout its history, NPL has contributed to game-changing breakthroughs in modern computing and data science. From crafting the proposal for the very first computer to the development of packet switching (the building blocks of today’s internet), NPL has left an indelible mark on the digital space. Find out how our work has been key to ensuring the global comparability of data and digital services. Check out our selection of historic artefacts and photographs and discover how computing has evolved since Alan Turing's work on the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) in 1946.
The accurate measurement of greenhouse gas emissions is an important step in reaching the UK’s net-zero targets. Our scientists will be demonstrating how our optical gas imaging cameras and sensors help detect leaks and monitor emissions. Have a go at finding the leak using our infrared cameras!
Get involved in our interactive demos – examine the forces applied to a wrench through physics simulation and help us train an AI machine learning model! Our team uses data analysis and modelling methods to help design experiments and find patterns others miss, whilst building confidence in data. Learn how we apply our unique methods to far-reaching areas of science and technology that impact our daily lives.
You might know what an MRI machine is from watching medical dramas, or maybe you’ve had a scan in one yourself. They use magnets to make a 3D picture of all the structures in your body so doctors and nurses can help diagnose and treat everything from knee injuries to tumours. Quantitative MRI goes beyond conventional MRI. Our work supports innovation in clinical applications like cancer, dementia, stroke and liver disease. We are developing advanced test objects, simulations and scan procedures to benchmark and calibrate scanners at different sites – this means that no matter where a scanner is located, they all adhere to the same standards.
NPL is the home of UK time and a world leader in developing atomic clocks. Come and visit our exhibits, including an interactive time scale demonstration, an atom trap game (suitable for all ages) and see a Caesium atomic clock in action.
Around 12 million ultrasound scans are performed annually in the UK. NPL’s work underpins ultrasound metrology to ensure the safety and well-being of new and expectant pregnant mothers, and patients. In this lab we will be demonstrating High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) and how this technology can be used to destroy tumours. You can also get involved in our handheld ultrasound scanning demonstration.
Mass and force measurements are a key part of everyday life - from ensuring that pharmaceuticals have the correct amount of life saving ingredients to measuring the thrust of aircraft engines. Visit our lab to see a copy of the UK’s national standard of mass. You’ll also have the chance to carry out your own measurements and calibrate yourself using our incredibly accurate balances.
We are proud to be a world-class organisation doing exceptional science, and to have an atmosphere of support and collaboration. If you are energetic, imaginative and share our values, find out more about the careers on offer at NPL.