• Question: what is the favourite part of your job

    Asked by kodey to Catherine, Charlotte, Colin, Becki, Rick on 24 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by marsa1014, jayp.
    • Photo: Rebecca Scott

      Rebecca Scott answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I love creating experiments. I really like taking an idea or a suggestion and trying to figure out how to test it. I was once asked whether leather could have been used as armour in the Middle Ages, so I got some leather and stabbed it lots and measured the results. I tried loads of different treatments too, like boiling to leather to see what happened and how that affected the results.

      At the moment I have been trying to see whether we can find out if the Romans recycled glass. To do this I’ve collected different types of glass, crushed and mixed them and then remelted them into new glasses and I’m testing the chemistry, to see how it has changed…

    • Photo: Charlotte Dalton

      Charlotte Dalton answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I love trying things no one has done before and getting them to work to make new chemicals 🙂

    • Photo: Colin Swift

      Colin Swift answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Probably exploring something new and then presenting the results either in an academic paper or in a presentation. The work to get there can be rewarding too!

    • Photo: Catherine Fontinelle

      Catherine Fontinelle answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Hi @kodey,
      Well today I had to test 200 chlamydia samples…getting that done, reported and cleaned up is a real balancing act, on top of that I had to test some samples for MRSA and some others for chicken pox. There are timers going off all over the place, and lots of organisation going on. I love it. It’s a bit like being in a fish and chip shop with a long queue, and all the meals take different times to cook, but you need to keep serving people in order…tricky but satisfying.

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