re: #254 klys (maker of Silmarils)

Part that. Part instrument size, honestly. I worked with three different NMR spectrometers in grad school, ranging in strength from 9.4T to 18.8T. Big instruments, especially by the time we’re talking about the 18.8, but the 9.4T is still producing a field stronger than most commercial MRIs (which Google tells me max out at about 3T) and is substantially smaller than the MRI.

Our sample sizes were in the 20-50mg range, but that’s because there were some other specialized bits of equipment involved taking up some of the available space inside the magnet.

Out of curiosity, did these NMR systems have enough in the way of stray magnetic field that the entire room needed to be kept strictly free of significantly magnetic materials, like the medical facilities have to do with their MRI systems?