• Question: Is it cool being a scientist and what is your favourite thing to do in the lab ?

    Asked by anon-185667 to William, Rebecca, Martyna, Callum, Alice, Adam on 12 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: William Glass

      William Glass answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      I really enjoy being a scientist. I love working in a group / place that you can discuss all sorts of different ideas and theories. It’s a great field to be in as you get to meet people from all sorts of backgrounds who can share their expertise with you. As for my favourite thing to do in the lab, I guess it’s to discuss ideas with others, you can see if it seems feasible or if it something someone else may know more about. I love it, you’re always learning new things!

    • Photo: Rebecca Roddan

      Rebecca Roddan answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      Yeah, its fun getting to discover new things and I feel like I learn something new everyday. In the lab, I really like doing enzyme reactions. It usually takes a while to get to the point where I’m testing different molecules I’ve made with my enzyme to see if the enzyme can convert them to products. So it’s exciting to get there finally and get some results. I also like getting to spend time with like-minded, interesting people all day. Working in a lab is a really relaxed environment and after a while, lab tasks become fairly easy to you so the lab is a pretty sociable place to work.

    • Photo: Adam Berlie

      Adam Berlie answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      Being a scientist has it’s good points and it’s bad points like anything else. Generally it is very cool, even though at first you may think people who like science are a bit sad, however, most of us are not like the Big Bang Theory. Science can teach you a massive amount about the world around you and when you start to study physical phenomena more in depth, it can give you a deeper appriciation of the natural world.

      One of the biggest advantages of being an academic in science, once you’ve gone beyond the PhD level, is that you can start building your own research programme. This involves finding problems that intrigue you and studying them. It gives you a lot of freedom to explore things yourself and begin to find and solve questions. I spend a lot of time working on my own research so am very happy doing this in the lab. As for a specific technique that I probably enjoy most; I should say muon spin spetroscopy as this is what I work in and am an expert in. Although, I enjoy most experiments as they all provide you with different ways to understand materials.

    • Photo: Callum McHugh

      Callum McHugh answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      I love being a scientist and getting an opportunity to work in an area that I really enjoy. I really enjoy teaching students and trying to motivate them to learn more.
      I also enjoy research and working in the lab. My favourite thing to do in the lab is synthesise new molecules and then try to work out why they behave the way they do. This might include looking at their colour or fluorescence emission or conductivity…!

    • Photo: Martyna Pastok

      Martyna Pastok answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Yes, it is great and I love my job. The best thing is to design and perform experiments and then data analysis. You need to think if the results you have got are good, if the data is of good quality and if results make sense. Then based on outcome you design a better experiments and you try it again if you can repeat what you have observed before. Then you need to think of a different method to verify if observation is correct. Then you can have conclusion and can think of a general story and how processes you try to understand are working and what they mean and what is their mechanism. The favorite thing for me is continue being curious and study what fascinates me to understand some aspects of biology better.

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