• Question: have you invented anything? or are working on inventing something?

    Asked by 977nepk48 to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 6 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by 669nepk28.
    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      Yes, lots of science in the field of optical fibres is inventing new types of fibres or devices. My most recent one, where I wanted equipment to quickly test optical imaging fibres, didn’t work very well though.

    • Photo: Nina Jordan

      Nina Jordan answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      No, I don’t see myself as creative or inventive and I don’t enjoy the challenge. But I appreciate that there are people who love doing exactly that…

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      I once thought I’d be the person to invent 3D printed pollen, but it turned out scientists in New Zealand had got there first – now I’m glad, though, because it means they’ve done loads of the hard work! I think I could end up being the first person in the UK to 3D print pollen from South America, if I get the money to do it, but I know a few others have printed British pollen too so it wouldn’t be too dangerously new 😉

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Loads of stuff!
      A lot of the work involves designing experiments different to those others have done before.
      That means creating new equipment to run the experiments!
      For example, I’ve created a system that delivers odours at really low concentrations, headgear for measuring sniffing in mice, and in our lab we created a big mousehouse where 20 mice can live together.
      We can watch how they interact with each other by tracking them using microchips we put under their skin.
      Sometimes we have to be quite resourceful so I make lots of stuff by cobbling together random things I find lying around in the lab.
      Once we know they work, we make better versions of them later.
      Blutac and tape are our weapons of choice!
      Today we fixed a camera high up in our lab using a long thin, tough piece of plastic we found lying around.
      It was just the right shape! I think the builders might still be looking for it…

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