• Question: What is the most important thing to remember in your field of work

    Asked by beccasmiley123 to Charlotte, Colin, Becki, Rick on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Rebecca Scott

      Rebecca Scott answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      oooh, another good question…

      For me, it’s that every situation is different. I may be given the same or similar materials and objects to look at, but the questions being asked and the limitations given to me (whether I can destroy a piece of it or not, how much money I can spend, how long the project can take etc) will be different each time. This means I am always having to re-design experiments and think on my feet. If a sample is the wrong size/shape for a particular method to work, can I do something simple to ‘fix it’ or do I need to re-sample?

      I think also, to always be prepared and not to panic if things go wrong. For most of the machines that I work with, I have emergency ‘fix it’ devices, like plasticine, selotape, elastic bands etc. They won’t solve the problem in the long-term but might work long enough for the immediate situation.

    • Photo: Charlotte Dalton

      Charlotte Dalton answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      that chemistry is very picky! reactions that should work might not beacause its a cold day or because there is something in the flask which wasn’t cleaned out properly, so we have to be careful to control as many things in the reaction as possible to make sure it works right!

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