• Question: XDDDD WHAT IS UR FAV TING IN SIENCE

    Asked by _xXx_Alex_Ó_Briain_xXx_ to Gavin, Karen, Mark, Michel, Roisin on 7 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by 644xygg26, 393xygg42.
    • Photo: Karen

      Karen answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      My favourite thing in Science is blood film morphology. This involves putting some blood on a glass slide and making a blood smear, staining it and examining it under a microscope. this is used for the diagnosis of Leukaemia, anaemia, malaria, platelet disorders and red cell abnormalities (e.g. sickle cell disease). It is fascinating and there are a huge amount of different types of leukaemia and haematology disorders that can be diagnosed by examining a blood film. The size, shape, colour and numbers of different types of blood cells are used to make a diagnosis.
      It is hugely important that the scientist and consultant haematologist get the diagnosis right as the treatment and prognosis for different blood diseases varies greatly.

    • Photo: Michel Destrade

      Michel Destrade answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      It’s solving a maths problem! And then being able to talk about it to other scientists and also to pupils and students and the general public.

    • Photo: Mark Kennedy

      Mark Kennedy answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      My fav thing in science is when I’m working on a telescope. Most of the telescopes I work with are located on the top of mountains, and there are very few people up there, so it’s always really peaceful. I get to do a lot of hiking during the day (since we can’t observe the sky when the Sun is up) and then, during the night, I get to do some really cool science using awesome telescopes. It’s just the best! The only downside is sleeping – I don’t get to do much of it, and it’s normally at really weird hours (I normally go to sleep at sunrise, around 6 am, and then get up around 2pm)

    • Photo: Roisin Jones

      Roisin Jones answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      My favourite thing in science generally is solving a problem that’s been puzzling me! The longer it’s been bugging me, the more satisfaction I get out of solving it.

      More specifically, one of my favourite things that happened in science recently is that scientists managed to take pictures of a chemical reaction happening on a molecular level! This is particularly cool for me because as an organic chemist, I run a lot of reactions, and draw a lot of pictures representing what I think is happening in those reactions, but I can’t observe it directly! Seeing pictures taken at a molecular level is physical proof that what we’re drawing is a relatively accurate representation. If you’re interested in actually seeing the pictures, there’s an article here that shows them: http://news.berkeley.edu/2013/05/30/scientists-capture-first-images-of-molecules-before-and-after-reaction/

    • Photo: Gavin Coleman

      Gavin Coleman answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      My favourite thing in science so far is being able to see the shapes of the particles I make on a TEM. The fact that technology for scientific research has gone so far that I can *see* the absolutely tiny particles I make is so cool, and all the different shapes too.

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