Question: Which experiment or experiment result shocked you the most

Struan Simpson answered on 10 Mar 2020:

Good question! Experiment-wise, I was trying to weigh out a chemical to make one of my materials, and when I touched the metal spatula against it, the chemical burst into flames! That was really shocking for me because I wasn’t expecting it to happen at all (and it shouldn’t have happened!). The reason why it did was because the chemical was impure, and it was the impurity was what caused the fire. It’s not happened since then thankfully!

Results-wise, it wasn’t quite as flashy as that! I was trying to do some electrical measurements on one of my materials using a technique we hadn’t tried before. My supervisor and I weren’t really expecting it to show anything interesting, but it turned out to be something we don’t think has ever been seen before! So that I would say was quite shocking to us.