• Question: what kind of cool thing do you do in your expriments

    Asked by h3llo to Gemma, Aime, Akshat, Diana, Judith on 22 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by ilikecereal.
    • Photo: Judith McCann

      Judith McCann answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I do synthesis reactions (which are usually quite dull) and characterization tests (to figure out what I’ve made)

      These can be measuring physical properties, like the strength or elasticity of my gels or they can be chemical properties. I recently did fluoresence microscopy which is where things are dyed to make them glow under certain colours of light, I got some really cool images of bright green glowing particles!

    • Photo: Gemma Sharp

      Gemma Sharp answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I add chemicals to some cells taken from a human uterus (womb) and then test to see how levels of different proteins in the cells change in response to the chemicals.

      The coolest thing I’ve done so far is put a special fluorescent virus in to my cells so that I can see them under a microscope – they glow bright green 😀

    • Photo: Akshat Rathi

      Akshat Rathi answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      I do synthesis reactions like Judith but mine are quite fun. I deal with chemicals that if exposed to air may catch fire. I do reactions at 80 degrees below the freezing point of water. Sometimes I distil chemicals at 150 degrees above the boiling point of water under vacuum (almost).

      There is always some fun smelling and foul smelling compounds that people in the lab end up making. Overall it is good fun!

      PS: I would like to make green glowing particles but right now I have to please myself with the range of colours (red, orange, green, purple) that my reaction mixtures give.

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