• Question: What is the most interesting experiment you have ever seen/done?

    Asked by to Daren, Lynne, Phillip, Simon on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Daren Fearon

      Daren Fearon answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      The most interesting thing I have done in science has involved solving the structure of a protein. This isn’t a single experiment but actually involves many experiments. First you have to grow some cells and make some protein, then purify it, crystallise it, take it to your friendly neighbourhood synchrotron (like Diamond) and collect the diffraction pattern and finally analyse the data and solve the structure. A lot of work goes into it but if you get the result you’re after it is worth all the work!

    • Photo: Lynne Thomas

      Lynne Thomas answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      This is quite a tricky question as I tend to get excited by most of my experiments! I think the ones I am most interested by the ones that are the most complicated to set up. We are currently doing experiments where we heat and cool our crystals and shine a laser on them all whilst shining X-rays on them. The laser allows us to start some chemistry happening in the crystal and the X-rays let us watch what is happening inside the crystals. We are watching things that happen very fast on what we call the nanosecond level which is a thousand millionth of a second! Very fast!

    • Photo: Phillip Manning

      Phillip Manning answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      We scanned the fossil remains of a gorgeous fossil of Archaeopteryx at the Stanford synchrotron in the USA. Watching the screen slowly reveal the chemistry of the fossil for the first time in 150 million years, was fantastic. We soon realised, as the image slowly appeared…line-by-line…that some of the preserved chemistry included soft tissues, such as the feathers. We were the first scientists ever to see this ‘chemical ghost’ of the first bird. You could have heard a pin drop as we saw the first lines on the screen! We were later able to image the structure of a pigment protein (eumelanin) from the fossilised feathers of Archaeopteryx for the very first time. I still get goose-bumps when i think of this experiment 🙂

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      My university do an open day for the public every year and they do a show with lots of flashes and loud bangs. I still find it really exciting! You can see my favourite experiment from the whole show here:

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