-
Asked by Josie :) to Kylie, Matt, Bex, RobB, Sam on 13 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by jodie.
-
Kylie Belchamber answered on 13 Jun 2016:
I think the hardest thing is that you have to repeat experiments a lot of times, to make sure that what happened the first time happens every time. I tend to do each experiment on 15-30 different samples, and normally do them 2 at a time. This means I have to do the same thing loads! It can get a little boring when it is the 20th time repeating an experiment, but I know that when it is done I can go and do something different next time.
This is even worse when it is a really long experiment and I have to start it at 8am and finish at 8pm. That doesn’t happen often though 🙂
-
-
Matt Dunn answered on 13 Jun 2016:
The hardest thing is performing complex, difficult experiments that take many weeks to fully complete, only to find that they haven’t worked and you have no idea why.
It can be quite a frustrating job, but if you have the determination to keep at it, you can eventually find the source of the problems, fix it, and then start to produce experiments that give lots of data. In fact, PhDs are given 3 years to produce their work simply because making the experiments work takes many repetitions and months of work!
Comments