• Question: What was your favorite experiment?

    Asked by Will@Idontcare to Matt, Adam, Adele, Deborah, Samantha on 10 Jun 2017. This question was also asked by ItzTig OMG, Ellie.
    • Photo: Matthew Lee

      Matthew Lee answered on 10 Jun 2017:

      ELISA!

      ELISA stands for Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay, which basically means you use an enzyme to make an antibody produce a colour. It’s my fave experiment because when you do it right and it works you see the liquid change from clear to coloured and that’s so exciting because it means you haven’t failed!!

      Also, the ELISA has some really cool science behind it but is really simple (you should definitely google it and read about how it works). I did ELISA’s for 3 whole months during my Masters research project and didn’t get bored once!!

    • Photo: Adam Hargreaves

      Adam Hargreaves answered on 11 Jun 2017:

      Nanopore sequencing!

      This was like being in a science fiction movie, and it’s still hard to believe that it works!

      This is where you sequence DNA using a device called a MinION (there’s a photo of one on my profile) which is a DNA sequencer about the same size as a mars bar. The amazing thing is it is in real time, so you can see the DNA sequence as it’s being read by the device. Normally DNA sequencing machines are about the size of a washing machine (sometimes a lot bigger), so being able to do this experiment at home, using my laptop, was incredible!

    • Photo: Deborah Aitken

      Deborah Aitken answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      I never got to do this experiment but it was the best one I read about and it got me interested in how we think and learn. In the 60s a guy called Sperry studied people with brains that were split in two – so the left part and right part couldn’t talk to each other.

      He did many tests but this is the most fun. He showed someone with a split brain a photo of a nude person, but covered their right eye so only their left eye sees it and only half their brain gets the information. The person laughed at the nude but couldn’t say why it was funny!!! Therefore you need the other half of your brain to know why it’s funny.

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