You may have wondered what your smartphone is made of and where the materials come from. Scientists at the University of Plymouth wanted to find out the answers, too, and used one particular high-tech tool to get to the bottom of things — a blender.

By blending an entire mobile phone to dust, and then conducting a chemical analysis of the dissolved results, the team of scientists wanted to show that there are high quantities of rare or “conflict” elements in each phone and hope to encourage users to recycle their devices.