• Question: What sort of experience -as a scientist- could I get at my age?

    Asked by Zealousy to Chris, Josh, Rebecca, Rob, Susan on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Rebecca Dewey

      Rebecca Dewey answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      This is an excellent question – probably my favourite question so far!

      How old are you (if you don’t mind me asking!)? When I was at school, we did a week of work experience (in November of year 10 I think). I didn’t just want to do this in a shop so I e-mailed a few professors at my nearest university (Reading university at the time) and I asked them if I could do my work experience there. The Reading physics department said I could come and work with them, so I spent a week helping them with testing and analysing the content of car/plane exhaust gases using an infrared machine. After that I didn’t want it to stop at a week, so I arranged to go along after school a couple of days a week. I also started working a bit with the cybernetics department, doing little jobs like putting robots back together when people had broken them! Then when I started my a levels I had a more flexible timetable and didn’t need to be in school unless I was in lessons. So I spent most Fridays at the University, and a lot of time in the holidays.

      The fact that you’re even asking this question means that you’ve got more brains than most people your age, so I’m sure any university department would be able to find something for you to help with. Have a look through your nearest university’s webpage and see if any of their research areas take your fancy. Then contact them and just ask! Good luck!

    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      It depends on what your age is – you didn’t tell us!

      Most people in Y10 get to do a week or two of work experience. Many universities will host work experience students: here at Sheffield physics department we have put together a work experience package called SUPER, for Sheffield University Physics Experience in Research, which aims to teach you some useful skills and get you involved in a mini research project, as well as learning what the rest of the department gets up to. We have had at least one ex work experience student who came back and worked with one of my colleagues in her spare time throughout the following year – he is very impressed with her.

      Between Y12 and Y13, you can enrol with the Nuffield Foundation to do a summer project, again with a university or in industry. This takes place over your summer holidays. Many universities cooperate with Nuffield to host these.

      Depending on what type of science you want to do, there are also things you can do on your own. If you want to be a biologist, there are interesting things you can do in your own garden, e.g. take surveys of wildlife. For would-be physicists or engineers or computer scientists, there are amazing projects you can do with a Raspberry Pi, and you can set one of those up for less than £50 if you use your TV as the monitor (the monitor is the main cost!).

      It’s great that you’re already thinking about this. The key point is not to be afraid to ask people! If you live within commuting distance of a university, check out their website – there will be contact details.

    • Photo: Chris Armstrong

      Chris Armstrong answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Based on this question I’m going to assume you’re around the 14-15yr old age (I could be wrong)

      And if you are, theres all kinds of places you can look, Rebecca covers an excellent method in her answer, personally I never made it as far as a university to do any work experience in. (In fact my year 10 work experience was in a book shop) But work experience with universities aren’t the only way to get hands on experience.

      I’m betting that your school, like mine, runs little in class experiments or at least has the tool kit to do so. Talk with one of your teachers see if they would be willing to set you a challenge after school, if you are after physics a great one that requires little kit is measuring gravity.

      You just need something to drop, some way to measure the variables and a little bit of error analysis.

      Good Luck Zealous!

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