• Question: What has been your longest experiment?

    Asked by :) to Adrian, Gaia, Jim, Scott, Vicky on 5 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Gaia Andreoletti

      Gaia Andreoletti answered on 5 Mar 2016:

      I think my longest experiment was a month long. I was dealing with extremely big files and I had to optimise/check every script I was coding to make sure I was not making any mistakes.

    • Photo: Adrian Buzatu

      Adrian Buzatu answered on 6 Mar 2016:

      In my field, particle physics, experiments take a few years. Particle colliders work day and night for a few years. We analyse their data. The lifetime of an accelerator is roughly 25 years. It was the case of the Tevatron accelerator in US whose data I analysed during my PhD in Canada. It is the duration estimated for the LHC accelerator at CERN in Switzerland where I work currenlty as a postdoc.

    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      Real experiments are much longer than the ones you do at school. I guess at school an experiment can last a day or so, but in real advanced science labs, experiments go on for months or years. Lots of planning, purchasing, preparation before you even spend a long time gathering data. Then there’s ages analysing the data and writing up a report! All good fun, though, and I don’t notice or think about the time at all. It’s just the day-to-day job I get paid to do!

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