• Question: have you ever discovered somthing that you would not think that would happen

    Asked by henryparr to Alexander, Josh, Serena, Simone, Stuart on 25 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Stuart Archer

      Stuart Archer answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      This actually happens more often than you’d think! Whenever we start an experiment (particularly a chemical reaction in my case) that’s never been done before it’s pretty much impossible to work out all of the things that are going to happen. You can predict based on similar systems, past experience, and theory what is most likely to happen, but sometimes this isn’t enough. You can even do that same thing twice sometimes, and tiny changes in the way you do it give you a different result!

      For example, just last week I did a chemical reaction that was meant to be very simple – it was literally a case of:

      A + B —-> C

      For reasons that are still not clear, A + B gave C and one other unknown chemical, that’s very similar to C, but there’s no way I can see in which it could have formed. It’s things like this that, whilst frustration, often turn out the be the most fun part about science!

    • Photo: Josh Makepeace

      Josh Makepeace answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Hi henryparr – Absolutely! It’s part of the reason I love doing science, it always surprises you 🙂

      In my work, I often find that experiments work almost the same as how you intended them to, but there will be some small part which is unexpected. It’s one of the reasons why you never really finish a project, there are alway more questions to answer!

      I had one situation where I was testing a compound that I thought would be really bad at storing hydrogen, but it turned out it was really good. It was just working in a completely different way to how I had imagined!

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