Because hands-on experimental work remains at the core of science and engineering!
But laboratories and laboratory work are changing. Disciplinary boundaries shift and techniques used in the pure sciences become more commonplace in engineering. Equipment is now routinely digitally connected so that results can be transmitted straight to the your devices for further processing. The quantity of data obtained in a typical experiment can be orders of magnitude more than was the case only a few years ago. Increasingly, experiment and computation sit side by side.
These developments demand a new unified approach to the provision of laboratory teaching. The University of Birmingham has invested about £45 million in the CTL to enable this to happen.
We want you to be familiar with the latest laboratory methods and to be able to move easily into positions in industry where such methods are used. That is why the CTL’s facilities are “industry standard”.