• Question: what was the first experiment you actually did?

    Asked by hemming08m to Chris, Eva, Michael, Paddy, Philip on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Eva Bachmair

      Eva Bachmair answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I think that was one in school in biology. It was called Blue Genes, so basically a genetics experiment. We inserted a gene vector into lactobacteria that caused the colonies to become blue when the gene was correctly inserted into the geneome and also switched on. I don’t remember the specifics but it was great fun for us. Not for our teacher though. I recall him saying, once and only.

    • Photo: Paddy Brock

      Paddy Brock answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      The first one I can remember was about breathing rate and heart rate. We all ran around for different periods of time at different speeds and then measured our pulses and breathing rates. I think I was too exhausted to understand the results at the time! (but it was probably that as the time of running increases the pulse rate increases, and then above a certain threshold of running time (i.e. oxygen demand) your breathing rate also increases).

    • Photo: Chris Jordan

      Chris Jordan answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I can’t remeber the first thing I did at school – but I remember my first real astronomy experiment. I had a small optical telescope for my birthday, and it was difficult looking at the stars because I lived in a city. So I did a sunspot experiment for the whole summer holiday. I had a notebook with circles drawn on each page and every day projected the image of the Sun onto the next circle in the book and drew round the sunspots. You can see them move slowly across the face of the sun because the sun is spinning just like earth – but it takes around 15 days to spin (but the Sun isn’t very solid and the middle goes slower than the poles)

    • Photo: Michael Wharmby

      Michael Wharmby answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Hmm. Good question!
      The first experiment I remember doing (and designing myself) was using a toy car and measuring how far it would travel on different surfaces, to determine the different amounts of friction from the different surfaces.
      I think the first real chemistry experiment I was making alcohol (ethanol) turn into vinegar – we got to use proper glassware and everything, set up a condenser and then make some bad smells.

    • Photo: Philip Denniff

      Philip Denniff answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Being a chemist the first experiment I did had to go with a bang. It was putting bangers (do they still exist, cheap fireworks that explode) down a metal tube to see how far they would go. Ok may be that was mucking around and not an experiment. The first school experiment I can remember was breaking a six inch nail with expansion. That went with a bang too. The nail was held in a three pronged clamp. The central prong with a metal bar that was heated. It got my attention, I have loved science ever since.

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