Question: Can you change the world as we know it?

Andrew French answered on 23 Jun 2014:

I believe science is always changing the world, all be it one small step at a time. the purpose of all science is to advance our knowledge of ourselves and the world. The aim of scientific experiments is to do this in a way which means we are as sure as we can be that the things we find out are correct. Mistakes and incorrect results still happen, by the idea behind the scientific method is to try to make them as reliable and repeatable as possible.

Most science examines a really tiny part of the world, perhaps looking at a particular kind of cell in resonse to one particular disease. This will form part of lots of other ‘small’ experiments going on in the same field of work. Together, the results might lead to a new discovery, perhaps about a new kind of medicine. But this process can (and usually does) take many years.

Once in a while though, someone might stumble upon something completely game changing. Sometimes, this is completely by chance! For example, you may have heard of Penicillin, an important antibiotic. It was discovered by a chap called Fleming, by chance, when he left a petri dish open and mould grew on it. He observed something curious about the way the mould was growing, and from this basically discovered Penicillin. You can read more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#Discovery

So, sometimes, change can happen really quickly! You never know as a scientist whether next month you’ll chance upon something amazing.