• Question: Whats the worst thats happened when you've done an experiment?

    Asked by submarine3 to Jen, Joseph, Michael on 23 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by rosem001.
    • Photo: Jen Gupta

      Jen Gupta answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Most of my work involves sitting in front of a computer all day so I’m not in danger of blowing anything up or breaking equipment that’s worth thousands of pounds! I don’t do experiments in the sense that you’re probably thinking of – I don’t work in a lab or do anything with bunsen burners or lasers or anything fun like that. The worst thing that’s probably happened to me was when I went to a telescope in India to look at some galaxies. We realised that it was taking a lot longer for the telescope to move each time it looked at a new galaxy so we changed the schedule. However when we got the data we found that something had gone wrong and a few hours of the observations were just rubbish 🙁

    • Photo: Michael Taggart

      Michael Taggart answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      This is an easy one for me as it is branded on my brain. It was when I broke a VERY expensive rotor ( a bit like a whirlytop with tubes inside and the size of a kettle) that spins at 100,000 revolutions per minute in a super centrifuge. What’s even worse is that it broke when inside the machine and when my boss was on holiday. So when they guy came to repair it he said it would cost thousands of pounds but that I was lucky it hadn’t crashed against the side of the machine, burst it’s way out and hurtled across the room killing anyone in its way. Goodness knows how I didn’t just pack my bags and take the first train back to Glasgow with the thought of having to tell my boss – a stern character at the best of times – when he came back.

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