• Question: what is one of your favourite science experiments

    Asked by OwnZ v DOcTeR to Chris, Hayley, Jimi, Maddison, Omur on 10 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by ps_no1, 674gdge39.
    • Photo: Hayley Moulding

      Hayley Moulding answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      Measuring the brain activity of children with genetic syndromes. I get to meet the families, go to their home and really get to know everyone. I then get to look at the activity of the brain which is fascinating and work out whether it is different to someone without a genetic syndrome.

    • Photo: Omur Tastan

      Omur Tastan answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      I like doing my own experiments but I also like different type of experiments!
      I saw a magnetic slime today and it swallowed coins almost like a monsters which was hilarious! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCTzqECw-Zc

    • Photo: Jimi Wills

      Jimi Wills answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      My favourite of my own is figuring our what all the proteins are on chromosomes. This is important, because it’s these proteins that protect our DNA from damage and stop cancer happening.

      Of other peoples experiment, my favourite is Louis Pasteur’s swan-neck flask experiments. He boiled broth… then put it in different types of flask. People back then believed in “spontaneous generation”… that is life just appears from nowhere.

      When you leave the broth without a lid stuff grows in it, and when it has a lid it doesn’t.

      People assumed it was because air was necessary for life to appear. But Pasteur’s swan-neck flask allowed air in, but the snaky tubey top of the flask did not allow particles to get from the air outside to the broth inside.

      In this way he demonstrated that it wasn’t the air that was required, but something else… the life was floating in the air around us, and not just appearing from nowhere in the flask.

    • Photo: Chris Conselice

      Chris Conselice answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      One of my favourites is by an ancient Greek astronomer Eratosthenes who lived 2200 years ago. He was the first to show that the earth was round and how big it is. He did this simply by looking at the length of shadows at different points on the earth. He got the size almost exactly right too, which is incredible using just shadows!

    • Photo: Maddison Coke

      Maddison Coke answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      My favorite experiment that I do is making sandwichs of materials. I have a big metal box with all the air removed. In this box I then also have metals which I can heat up. Once they are heated you get lots of evaporation of the metals- if you add a flap to the top you can then very quickly create different materials all sitting on top of each other. When I am making them fast you can hear the shutters moving quickly and it actually sounds rather musical, plus you know your machine is working!

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