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Asked by alexandereasdale to Peta, Natalia, Daniel, Andrew on 18 Nov 2011.
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Peta Foster answered on 17 Nov 2011:
Solving problems, puzzles and mysteries is a lot of fun and in science every day is packed with them. Today i am thinking through all the great questions sent in, working out how to get a giant power supply connected to a little cell of gas so we can ionise some gas in a vacuum for the experiment we are doing.
In my experience most problems have solutions, they are not always the ideal solutions or the solutions we’d want but the solutions are out there waiting to be thought, discovered and applied and all this exciting mysteries are available to everyone to investigate 😀
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Daniel Scully answered on 17 Nov 2011:
Yes. Definitely. It’s how we go about science.
More often than not if something is easy then it’s already been done. If we’re going to break new ground and discover something new then there are almost always problems to overcome.
And there are few things more satisfying than overcoming problems – that gives you a real sense of achievement!
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Andrew Cairns answered on 17 Nov 2011:
Science is one huge puzzle, like a suduku! The good thing is that there are both practical problems we have to solve – often the case if no one else has ever done an experiment before – and theoretical more thought type problems, which often require just sitting and thinking about something for a long time. The thing is, answers always come to me in the most bizarre places…
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Natalia Parzyk answered on 18 Nov 2011:
Like other said problem solving is our every day case. In my case, being an experimental physicist not only mean I’m doing measurements all the time, I sometimes can get my results in few days and feel that’s it I’m seeing sth amazing! but after that I’m spending at least few weeks to try to look at my data in several different way (+reading a lot) and try to understand why it’s like that.
And in fact doing experiments also mean problem solving – a lot of thinking when sth is not working;)
But without any question to solve how boring world will be:)
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