• Question: what is the most complex experiment you have performed

    Asked by ? to Anne, Arthur, Rose, Ruhina, Thomas on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by leckeySaurous.
    • Photo: Ruhina Miller

      Ruhina Miller answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Most organic synthesis reactions can be quite complex because they have many different steps, so it takes time to purify your product at each step and work out if you have what you want

    • Photo: Rose Simnett

      Rose Simnett answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I do a few reactions that are very sensitive to moisture in the air and so the set-up for those is sometimes quite complex so that you don’t get air in your reaction. One of the chemicals I use explodes into a blue-green flame if in contact with air!

    • Photo: Thomas Farrugia

      Thomas Farrugia answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      I think in terms of complexity it’d have to be trying to understand how fast each enzyme in a 3 enzyme mixture is working, which didn’t work out as planned.

      Another complex one involved extracting mitochondria from yeast – so many different chemicals to preare and a lot of different steps to carry out – took most of the day to obtain a small white pellet of maybe 50 microlitres (0.05 of a millelitre!)

      Personally I think that the most elegant experiments are the simplest ones, especially if you’ve given your design some though and use the experiment to prove your point.

    • Photo: Arthur Wilkinson

      Arthur Wilkinson answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      The most complex experiments I’ve done were at a synchrotron (a ring-shaped device more than 700 metres in circumference which generates very strong x-rays). We were heating and cooling materials and following the changes within them using the x-rays

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