Question: How do you tend to conduct your experiments?

Megan Seymour answered on 4 Nov 2016:

Hi Lena!
I read a bit of your profile and it sounds like you really like science, which is great!
The name of the invention you are talking about is the Large Hadron Collider or LHC. You can read a bit more about it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7567926.stm (I think that article explains it quite well) 🙂
My experiments are all about trying to make new uranium compounds and seeing what they can tell us about how uranium can react.
So essentially I just mix different chemicals together and see what happens! But a lot of the chemicals I work with are very sensitive and if they came into contact with the oxygen that is in the air they would react vigorously with air straight away. I want to see other reactions so I have to make sure that none of my chemicals come into contact with oxygen. I usually do this by working in a glove box (like the one Homer Simpson uses in the Simpsons intro!?). A glove box is just a big box filled with nitrogen. Nitrogen is a gas that makes up a large part of normal air, but it is much less reactive than oxygen, so I can work safely with my chemicals. The glovebox also helps to protect me from the dangers of working with toxic and radioactive materials, so that’s an added bonus!