• Question: What is your favourite experiment you have done?

    Asked by anon-354123 on 13 Mar 2023. This question was also asked by anon-359849, anon-361015.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 13 Mar 2023:

      Any experiment, whether it works or not, that tells me something new and surprising about the universe. In that respect looking at how carbon monoxide molecules deposit on water ice and the impact that has on the rate of formation of stars is a fun idea! It shows how tiny things can influece the massive.

    • Photo: Graeme Dykes

      Graeme Dykes answered on 13 Mar 2023:

      At the start of my PhD, I made a compound using bromine. It always worked really well. At the end of the reaction the product crystallised out a brilliant yellow crystals. It always made me feel happy

    • Photo: Claire Sycamore-Howe

      Claire Sycamore-Howe answered on 13 Mar 2023:

      At university I ended up doing an industrial placement for AstraZeneca in Sweden and as part of that I did something called a “methodology development” project. Basically it’s trying to create a new way to make something, so it’s a bit like a year long experiment, as you repeat the experiment over and over again but you might change the temperature, or the inputs, or the way you heat.

      It might sound tedious to do the same experiment again and again, but it’s really satisfying when you get it to work and you’ve created new knowledge and a new method to make something.

    • Photo: Christy Sadler

      Christy Sadler answered on 13 Mar 2023:

      I run lateral flow experiments. These are similar to the Covid tests we have all done at home. It’s really fun because you can see the outcome of the experiments very quickly!

    • Photo: Alana McNulty

      Alana McNulty answered on 13 Mar 2023:

      When I was doing my PhD, I got to go to the USA to run some experiments out there with uranium. The experiment itself was so cool and meant that I got to learn a lot about radioactive contaminated land, but I also got the chance to travel and meet some really knowledgeable people, which was brilliant.

    • Photo: Nathalie Oguntona

      Nathalie Oguntona answered on 14 Mar 2023:

      I don’t really have a favourite as I like both experiments where the product is a crystal or a colourful substance

    • Photo: Craig Johnston

      Craig Johnston answered on 14 Mar 2023:

      My favourite experiment was one I did during my postdoc at Princeton University. When I mixed some chemicals together I got a totally different product if I did the reaction in the dark or by shining light on it. It is incredible that using the same starting materials I could make two different things just by flicking on a light switch.

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