• Question: What's the most exiting experiment you have ever done

    Asked by u11jacksonl to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Louise W, Marcus on 15 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by jameswy1.
    • Photo: Joanna Giles

      Joanna Giles answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi there! The exciting experiments are the ones that give you nice results! I personally find my red blood cell assays very exciting. In these experiments I add “complement” proteins into tubes with red blood cells. If the “complement” proteins do their job correctly, they work to burst open the red blood cells and release haemoglobin. I can compare how different genetic variants of the proteins work to burst the cells open (the faster the cells burst the “better” the proteins).

      I find this experiment exciting because you can actually see the cells burst and the red haemoglobin being released before your eyes. Also it only takes a few minutes to see the results – very exciting 🙂

    • Photo: Louise Walkin

      Louise Walkin answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      I find any experiment exciting! When nobody has ever done the experiment you are doing it is really exciting, as you don’t know what you are going to find! You always have an idea of what you would like to find, but most of the time it doesn’t go that way. Sometimes you have to use one technique to back up the results from another technqiue and I always find that I am excited for the results. Then I know whether I have a huge finding on my hands! 🙂

    • Photo: Louise Stanley

      Louise Stanley answered on 16 Nov 2012:

      The most exciting ones for me are the ones that no one has ever done before. When you get a result and you know that you are the first person ever to see it and find that thing out, that is the most exciting experiment!

    • Photo: Adam Paige

      Adam Paige answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      One I have really fond memories of was during my degree. We were given a chemical structure and told to work out how to make it from readily available chemicals in the lab in three steps (ie use the chemicals to make one compound, then change that into a second compound, then change that into the compound we had been told to make). It was so exciting working out the chemical reactions I was going to use. I had to analyse the compounds I made at each step to make sure they were the correct thing. And I got to use fuming sulphuric acid (a strong acid that pumps white fumes out of the bottle as soon as you open it. I had to wear thick acid-resistant gloves that looked like blue washing up marigold gloves). That was 20 years ago! (oh dear) but it was one of the first times I felt like a real professional scientist at work in a lab. Very fond memories.

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