Question: To Katherine Haxton I have two quistions; 1. What is your favourite chemical on the 'Periodic Table'? And why? 2. What is your favourite experiment that didn't work out but produced something more interesting than you expected? Please answer ThankYou x

Katherine Haxton answered on 15 Mar 2012:

1. My favourite element is probably platinum because it can be used to do some cool chemistry, and also makes very nice but expensive 🙁 jewellery!

2. When I was doing my PhD I did a reaction that had about 3 steps to it and by the end of the third step I was left with a horrible sticky black mixture (it looked like treacle). I thought it had gone wrong but was too fed up to clean it out. I left it over Christmas and when I came back to it beautiful crystals had formed. I had made the right molecules and it turned out that the crystals had very special properties – they were liquid crystals which is about how they line up in a solid. It was a pretty cool result for something I was too lazy to clean up!