Repeat, repeat, repeat

One of the first things my supervisor said to me when I started my PhD was "science can be doing the exact same thing, the exact same way, a lot".

As well as trying to instill in me the importance of repeating things in science he was also warning me that sometimes doing science can seem tedious. Actually I don't mind doing the same thing every day for weeks because when I analyse my data at the end of a run of experiments the results are always interesting.

Today I was thinking about how lots of researchers must look at the same thing A LOT. My usual view is this:


 This is the scale and dials I use to precisely stretch a muscle so that I can record the electrical activity from its nerve.

What is the thing you end up looking at mostly as a researcher?