• Question: What is your favourite experiment you've done

    Asked by text520haut on 19 Dec 2024. This question was also asked by wake520muon, chat520saps, kent520rhos.
    • Photo: Rachel Findlay-Robinson

      Rachel Findlay-Robinson answered on 19 Dec 2024:

      I spent two summers tracking ground squirrels (a bit like our squirrels, but they live in holes underground rather than in trees) in Canada – we would trap and weigh them, and count how many babies they had, and see if that changed over time or was affected by the weather. I love being outside, so that was a fantastic experiment for me to be part of 🙂

    • Photo: Carly Bingham

      Carly Bingham answered on 19 Dec 2024:

      When I was in secondary school, I got to do something called the ‘Extended Project Qualification’ which was an opportunity to do a project on anything that interested us. I did an experiment to find out what the best way to make a paper aeroplane was – I tried different types of paper, different paper sizes, different designs for folding them, adding weights to the nose and more.
      I then booked our school hall and spent the afternoon throwing them off the stage, measuring how far they flew, how long they spent in the air and how much they went off course from a straight to choose the ultimate winner!

    • Photo: Alexander Munnoch

      Alexander Munnoch answered on 10 Jan 2025:

      EXAFS (Extended X-Ray Adsorption Fine Structure) measurements at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble during my PhD.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_X-ray_absorption_fine_structure
      https://www.esrf.fr/

      The technique requires high intensity x-ray (hence the synchrotron use) and basically gives element-specific information about the types and numbers of atoms in coordination around that target element and their inter-atomic distances. Very useful when studying catalytic metal nanoparticles!

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