• Question: how did you make a lab and what do you make in the lab.

    Asked by dansp to Joe, Juan, Kate, Rory, Rosie on 10 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Kate Salmon

      Kate Salmon answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Hi Dan, I did not make my own lab. The lab that I work in has been used since the 50’s and so all the equipment was there before I started. In the lab, I make physical and chemical measurements of foraminifera shells which are microscopic shelled plankton that live in the surface layers of the ocean. I also consider the ocean my laboratory too and I use it to take sediment from.

    • Photo: Joe Sweeney

      Joe Sweeney answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Top question. People often think that a lab is a big fancy building and it often is, but experiments can be done anywhere really. There’s a great example of a chemist who was on a remote island during the war, and he had had to make all his scientific equipment by hand from any bits of metal he could find. When he carried out his experiments, he got exactly the same results as those obtained from a ‘proper’ lab!
      The lab you make depends on the questions you want to answer: if you want to know if vinegar and baking powder can make a rocket, you can set up a lab in your kitchen. If you want to find the Higgs boson, you’re going to need something bigger…

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