• Question: What practical experiment is the most interesting and enjoyable to you and what makes it so fun?

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      Asked by Dr Sibley to John, Laura, Luke, Rob, Ruth on 16 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by dontworryyoungone.
      • Photo: Laura Finney

        Laura Finney answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        I love working with the molecules I use at the moment as they can make all kinds of pretty colours which aren’t often seen with organic chemistry (they are mainly seen in inorganic metal chemistry). This means that when I purify them with column chromatography, sometimes you get bands of all different colours coming through and it is very pleasing to see 😀

      • Photo: John Fossey

        John Fossey answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        Making something that has never existed before. Especially where you make a synthetic plan and you combine your knowledge and practical skills to achieve it. But it is sometimes more interesting when you don’t get what you expect – figuring out why can open up new aspects of science.

      • Photo: Luke Williams

        Luke Williams answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        I always enjoyed running my kinetics experiments – and yes I get a lot of strange looks from my lab mates when I say this.

        Basically I was looking how fast my enzymes were able to run, and it was so interesting because it was one of the few times that I could be guaranteed some useful results. No matter how fast or slow my enzymes went, I knew they would work and no one had looked at them before, so it was new and useful data.

      • Photo: Ruth Patchett

        Ruth Patchett answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        I agree with John I love making things that have never been made before! But I also think home experiments can be great fun too, it is amazing what you can do with some stuff you find around the house! I would recommend buying a pack of eggs and trying these out https://www.buzzfeed.com/kasiagalazka/things-you-can-do-with-eggs-besides-coloring-them?utm_term=.iuZ40N7w9#.nxpbR1z4x

      • Photo: Robert Williams

        Robert Williams answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        I have never seen this one in action but I find this one fascinating….
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction
        Because it illustrates how a pot of chemcicals can have ‘life like’ properties

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