Question: which experiment was the best for you

Jess Smith answered on 10 Mar 2014:

Of the experiments that I have done in my PhD? In my project, I heat up small bits of a special type of plastic. and then squash them. Then they cool down and go hard again, but stay squashed. When I put them in water they expand a lot (but stay as solids). Once I had an idea of a different way to squash it, so gave it a go when I had finished my other work. (Experiments like these are sometimes called “Friday experiments”- where you just play around and see what happens) It turned out that it worked really well, and opened up a whole new area of the project (making them expand into different shapes when you put them in water). I really enjoyed doing that experiment.

Day to day I prefer mechanical testing- you just get to put stuff in big machines and tear it apart, or squash it. Which after all these years, I still find quite fun!

At school my favourite experiments were ones with colours, bubbles or fire! Anything that looked exciting, so mainly chemistry. I liked doing flame tests.

I hope this answers your question!