• Question: what is the coolest thing you have ever saw/ experienced while doing an experiment?

    Asked by anon-199420 to Sylvia, Sumit, Martin, Kate, Bryony, Aryanne on 7 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      When I was a student, we used to use mercury diffusion pumps. These boiled mercury in a vacuum to produce even better vacuum. But sometimes in the dark there would be an eerie green glow form the pump. I always thought that was quite cool!

    • Photo: Sylvia Soldatou

      Sylvia Soldatou answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      I was on a resercah cruise in the Atlantic for sample collection. I was also doing some simple microbiology experiments on the ship, like isolating bacteria and fungi from the sponges that were collecting. The lab on the ship had a big window and you could see outside, so one day I was doing awork in the lab and I saw whales from the window! That was amazing!

    • Photo: Sumit Konar

      Sumit Konar answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      generally it can take few hours, days, weeks to grow one nice crystal. I saw one of my crystal’s growth in less than a minute. i put one anti-cancer drug between two diamonds; pressurised and then heated to melt; the crystal grew from melt. it was so cool watching the growth of the crystal.

    • Photo: Kate McGonagle

      Kate McGonagle answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Wooow! Sylvia seen a whale. Can’t really beat that!! Seeing products literally crash out of solution as they form is always pretty cool – we call this precipitation!

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