• Question: Have you ever been surprised by the outcome of something you have done?

    Asked by Rosie to Alan, Ciorsdaidh, Lauren, Leonie, Martin, Neil, Shuo on 6 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Neil Keddie

      Neil Keddie answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      Good question @Rosie. And the answer is absolutely. Sometimes the best discoveries we make are the ones that are unexpected. You might have carefully planned out your reaction (or set of reactions) to make a new molecule, but then when you try that, you find you don’t get what you thought you would, but you made something unexpected instead.

      This has happened to be a couple of times – we call this serendipity, which literally means lucky discovery. In my lab, the last time this happened, we learned a lot about how a reaction occurred, which was totally different to what we thought would happen. We were able to study this more once we had spotted it, and that led to us publishing a paper (like a report of what we had done) in a chemistry journal (like a magazine for research results).

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I’m always surprised by the outcomes of experiments. If I could predict confidently what the outcome might be then there’d be no real reason for doing the experiment other than to prove that your prediction is right. While some aspects of science are a little like that, it’s much more fun when thing surprise you!

    • Photo: Lauren Webster

      Lauren Webster answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      Always! I always say you should speak, yes speak, kindly to your reactions if you wish them to behave. Sometimes the reactions just do not play ball and this makes you a bit frustrated. Frustration can lead to not such nice things being said to the reaction and then hey presto, it sometimes works!

    • Photo: Ciorsdaidh Watts

      Ciorsdaidh Watts answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      All the time! This is one of the best things about being a scientist, the data (or results) guide what we do, and we can never be certain where that will lead. Some of the most important scientific discoveries made have been unexpected experimental results.

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      Of course. Quite often my guess as to what will happen in an experiment is incorrect. But those are the best experiments because you learn the most!

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