• Question: How do you overcome a failed experiment? Does it knock your confidence, and if so how do you pick yourself back up from it? Alternatively, how does it feel when everything goes right and what has been your favourite part of the job?

    Asked by MeganF to Georgia, Sharron on 15 Jun 2023. This question was also asked by when485naw.
    • Photo: Georgia Brittain

      Georgia Brittain answered on 15 Jun 2023:

      Within research, failed experiments or experiments going a way you did not expect are kind of inevitable. We are doing experiments where we do not necessarily know the outcome, or from what we do know, we do not know how well it is going to go. Even with an experiment going ‘wrong’ we’re still able to learn something from this and apply that knowledge to try to make something better next time.

      However, when things do go how we’d expect or even better than expected, that is a real-time to celebrate. We can then also use this knowledge and have a direction to go in for where we know something works and try to optimise that even further.

      My really enjoy being in the lab and doing experiments, however, I reckon my favourite part of the job is the people I work with. Often projects are a collaborative effort and we all come together to help solve problems or discuss successes. It is really the people that make the whole thing work and it helps that they’re all so great! 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: Amy

    Amy commented on :

    Thomas Edison (inventor of the lightbulb) once said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
    Sometimes we don’t know much about a new topic and have lots of ideas. We have to test all the ideas to see which ones work and which ones don’t. We can still get a lot of information from experiments which don’t work as we expect.