• Question: how many experiments have u done

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      Asked by bobby Joe to Aoife, Brian, Conor, Louise, Matthew on 7 Nov 2016.
      • Photo: Aoife Lucid

        Aoife Lucid answered on 7 Nov 2016:

        Hello! My experiments are pretty different to what you would normally think of when you think about a chemistry experiment; instead of working with chemicals at a lab bench I use computer code to run simulations of experiments. If I counted every simulation I’ve ever run it would definitely be thousands of experiments by now which is crazy to think about!

      • Photo: Louise Mc Grath

        Louise Mc Grath answered on 7 Nov 2016:

        Hey Bobby Joe!

        I don’t think I have enough fingers to record how many experiments I have done! Just to give you a ball park figure since starting my PhD (1 year and 4 months) I have completed well over 2000 experiments! Haven’t I been busy haha? The reason I can do so many is because each of my experiments is a scan, and these can take a few seconds or even hours to run. Thankfully the most time I would spend collecting data in 1 scan is about 3 hours! I am not looking forward to 1 scan taking 2 weeks…

        I don’t even want to try calculate how many experiments I have completed over the past few years.. I think the figure would scare me!

      • Photo: Matthew Kitching

        Matthew Kitching answered on 7 Nov 2016:

        Hidy hi Bobby Joe,

        Hmmm thats a stumper! I think I’m a bit like louise – i couldn’t possible say! I think i was a little less productive than louise. I ran about 1 a day during my phd – thats when i was becoming a doctor. Ive been a chemist now for about 10 years so a fair few by now….

        Im a synthetic chemist – which means my goal is to make “stuff”. To do this, we have to try lots of different experiments to see what gives us the best results and largest amounts (a bit like if you were baking a cake without a recipe). Somedays this means heating things in (almost) boiling oil – or it might mean we cool things down so they would burn you if you touched them. Some days we add reagents so powerful they burst into flames if we used them in the open air.

        Other days we can sprinkle in a few drops of a chemical and the whole experiment will completely change – so we have to try lots of different things, and make notes about what happens (whilst not setting anything on fire lol). A lot of work later and we can make chemicals that have never existed before in the world – and then we get to see what these new chemicals can do.

        And that means more experiments, i don’t mind – they’re fun …. 🙂

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