• Question: What is the most irregular thing you have ever done in science? :)

    Asked by Oscar Quinn Is Valid on 3 Oct 2021.
    • Photo: Jacqueline Siu

      Jacqueline Siu answered on 15 Sep 2021:

      For my undergraduate lab class in Canada, I had to go to a supermarket and ask for a lemon sole fish (it had to be this particular fish). Over the course of the next couple weeks, we had to try to grow bioluminscent (glowing!) bacteria off of this rotting fish.

    • Photo: Catriona Cunningham

      Catriona Cunningham answered on 15 Sep 2021: last edited 15 Sep 2021 9:25 am

      Public engagement is right up there! I made and ran a slime making activity to help explain to people how a stroke can be caused by a blood clot. We get them to add different coloured beads to explain how different risk factors such as obesity and old age can increase your risk. I’ve also showed lots of people of all ages sheep brains. Almost all of them loved it! They really like that they can actually pick up and feel a real brain.

    • Photo: Giles Strong

      Giles Strong answered on 15 Sep 2021:

      For a school science-fair project, a friend and I tried to build a railgun: we got some copper strips from the local recycling centre, mounted them to high-density polythene blocks, and hooked it up a few car batteries. Using a spring injector, we tried to launch ball bearings, but they kept melting. We switched to carbon rods, but they would get stuck, turn red-hot, and melt the plastic. Eventually we gave up and just showed off the scorched prototype. This was all done under careful supervision, so don’t try this at home, as they say.

      My friend and I still laugh about it to this day. I think we donated it to a physics teacher at school who was known for building crazy stuff, like a high-powered electromagnetic can crusher.

    • Photo: Malcolm Macartney

      Malcolm Macartney answered on 15 Sep 2021:

      In the 1980’s was vaccinated against an infection and then had my plasma collected by the blood transfusion service as I was the only person in the UK with this antibody and known not to have HIV infection.

    • Photo: Judy Bettridge

      Judy Bettridge answered on 15 Sep 2021:

      I helped a friend who wanted to collect some bat poo to test for a fungal disease that only affects bats and horses. We camped out in the bush in Kenya on the side of an extinct volcano. We had a local guide who took us deep into the caves under the volcano where there were huge colonies of bats roosting on the ceiling, and the floor was knee-deep in bat poo! At one point we all agreed to turn off our head torches to see what it was like to be a bat – it is the only time in my life I’ve been somewhere where you literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

    • Photo: Lara Crespo

      Lara Crespo answered on 15 Sep 2021: last edited 15 Sep 2021 2:08 pm

      I had to collect knee pieces at the operatin room from people who had had their knee removed for a metal prosthesis. They give them to me in plastic jars and I had to go all over the hospital with the piece of a knee into the pocket of my lab coat.

      Then, once at the lab, I cut the bone into very small pieces and removed the fat and cells. Pretty gross, actually.

    • Photo: Richard Collins

      Richard Collins answered on 15 Sep 2021:

      Most irregular thing may have been having to carry a air-sensitive sample from Brighton to Manchester to then take it on a train, carefully packed so no air would get on the sample, and X-ray experiment.

    • Photo: Chris Henstridge

      Chris Henstridge answered on 16 Sep 2021:

      I guess carrying pieces of fresh human brain across town in the back of a taxi is pretty irregular for most people, but i was doing this about once a week for a couple of years!

    • Photo: Andrew Hone

      Andrew Hone answered on 17 Sep 2021:

      Recently I spent the best part of two years on sabbatical with my family in Sydney, Australia, working the maths department at UNSW where I was able to collaborate with and learn from several people, as well as being able to visit other places in Australia, which was great. While I was there, the Science Faculty was involved in an attempt to get in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of scientists gathered in one place. They gave us all white coats to wear, plus test tubes and other pieces of lab equipment that we all had to hold for the photo evidence. There must have been a few hundred science staff and students all gathered on the steps in the middle of the campus. However, in the maths department they gave us some extra black gowns to wear, with equations and graphs printed all over them in white – they were like something out of Hogwarts, so all the maths people looked rather strange! I still don’t know whether we beat the world record…

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