René Jansen, Regional Manager EDAX EMEA, Managing Director Ametek BV

How difficult is it to explain to your friends and relatives what you are doing during the week? Microscopes, detectors and analysis materials are not things that usually ring a bell with your family, friends and neighbors. “It is all scientific and we do not understand any of it”, is the usual response to our descriptions of what we do.

We at EDAX spend most of our time on our job and on the road. For most of us, this can only happen when our families support us by letting us travel the globe.

In an attempt to overcome this gap in understanding our “world”, I thought it would be worthwhile to organize an event where everybody at EDAX in The Netherlands could invite their family and friends to our lab and show them what we do in our world. Initially, I didn’t anticipate that there would be a lot of interest in this event, but I soon found out that close to 40 people were interested in coming.

The event took place on Sunday May 18^th at the EDAX facility in Tilburg, The Netherlands, where we usually have 6 employees working.  In the afternoon people were flabbergasted by René’s and Harry’s impressive demonstrations.  In no time family heirloom jewelry moved into the chamber in order to determine if the pearls were real or not (they were!). Someone else had a silver spoon, which had turned partly yellow after several times in a dish washer. What had happened to his spoon? Within 10 minutes René explained that the oxygen traces indicated corrosion, which had pushed the silver plating off to display the brass material underneath. Harry had a challenge to determine what an onion consists of. It turned out to be quite healthy thanks to several trace elements of metal.

At the end of the afternoon everybody went home satisfied with what they had learned and they had concluded that the world of EDAX is indeed very different and also very interesting. Now when we leave for work in the morning, we see in the faces of our family that think that we are going out to do a “good job” for our world and this is nice to know.