I am writing this as I embark on a journey from Copenhagen to Chicago for a 24-hour experiment. Luckily, I am going to be in the city longer than I will be flying, but only just. Traveling over 4,000 miles may seem like a long way to go for an experiment, and it is. I perform small-angle scattering experiments for a living though, and sometimes this is just what needs to be done. My previous post on Softbites was all about the fundamentals of X-ray and neutron scattering, but I didn’t give an indication of what an experiment is actually like. This post focuses on the practicalities. What are the experimental facilities like? What do you have to do to access them?