U. magnet facility dedication today

A magnetic-research facility that will eventually be valued at $14 million is scheduled to be dedicated today at the University of Utah.

The nuclear magnetic resonance building was constructed over the past year, at a cost of more than $7.5 million. The building is named for David M. Grant, a 75-year-old professor who is a pioneer in the field. Soon it will house the U.'s $4 million worth of existing NMR spectrometers.

Eventually, the university is committed to buy a more powerful, 800-megahertz NMR spectrometer worth $2 million or more.

Peter B. Armentrout, chairman of the university's chemistry department, said the instruments will be able to measure the structure of "very complex biomolecules."

The more powerful magnetic device will bring the total value of the new building, existing devices and planned new spectrometer to about $14 million, according to a university news release.

The university said the magnets will be strong enough to stop a heart pacemaker, erase credit cards and pull metal tools from a person's hands. For that reason, special protections are in place.

Most of the building is underground, adjacent to the outdoor plaza of the Henry Eyring Chemistry Building. The building has a basement level and a first floor, and a section has been cut from that first floor so that no one can walk above the magnet and be affected by it.

Research carried out in the building could show how medicines perform and allow scientists to watch molecular splicing, Armentrout said. Researchers also may be able to better understand how a medicine interacts with a virus.

"Some of those things are more in the future," he said, but that kind of NMR spectroscopy "is a very powerful tool."

Eventually, a still more-powerful device costing $5 million may be installed. According to the U., that 900-megahertz magnet will be capable of generating a magnetic field 207,000 times stronger than that of the Earth.

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