• Question: If a glass of lemonade is half full of liquid, how full is it from a scientist's point of view?

    Asked by HotDogHead to Freddie, Jena, Kirsten, Kon, Zarah on 4 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Konstantinos Drousiotis

      Konstantinos Drousiotis answered on 4 Nov 2016:

      Hi there,

      That’s one of my best beverages! It will be completely empty by the time I decide if its half full or half empty haha

      Jokes aside, I am one of those scientists (and human) with days when the lemonade glass is half full and days when it’s half empty. It is about learning to cope with issues that come up in your day-to-day life in the lab (and life itself). Cheesy as it sounds, it’s about learning to cope with the rain and not always use an umbrella. Then, at that stage you’d mostly see the glass as half full! It’s all a learning curve, the more you know the better.

      Ah also you’ll need to know how much volume the glass holds and then measure how much there is already in the glass. I doubt its 50% bang on 😛

    • Photo: Jennifer Bates

      Jennifer Bates answered on 4 Nov 2016:

      Hi

      Is the lemonade in a drinking glass or a beaker glass? Because if its the drinking kind of glass and not in the lab yey! because then I can drink it. If its in the lab in a beaker, they frown on that.

      I’d agree with Konstantinos (Hi Kon!), life is complex, and the lemonade glass can sometimes be half full and other days half empty. I have days where the sample I am working on is fantastic, full of stunning seeds that I can measure, select for radiocarbon dating and think about ancient agriculture (and occasionally I get a lemon pip in my ancient samples), then other days where if I find even half a barley grain it’s a miracle.

      Oh and always make sure you measure a liquid (even lemonade) from eye-level with the meniscus and take the reading from the bottom of the meniscus!

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