• Question: What's your favourite science experiment??

    Asked by anon-226278 to Sameed, Jose, joannabarstow, Heidi, Freya, Chris on 11 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-226448, anon-226006, anon-226021.
    • Photo: Freya Addison

      Freya Addison answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      My favourite science experiment I do with schools for outreach is with Liquid Nitrogen. We use a hammer to smash an inorganic (usually a piece of rubber tyre) and an organic object (usually a banana) at a normal temperature (not much happens) and once it’s been frozen in liquid nitrogen (they shatter). The rubber soon gets back up to temperature and you can stretch it again, but the banana’s cell walls are broken in the process and so it essentially rots quickly once broken.
      In the laser lab, my favourite experiment has been to image insects with a cloud imaging probe (CIPs). So usually the CIPs has a laser and array which records the shadow of a snowflake or raindrop passing through it. We tried it with different types of insects (all dead), it was the first time it had been done and really fun to test out at different speeds and methods.

    • Photo: Joanna Barstow

      Joanna Barstow answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      A great experiment you could do at home is to make your own spectrometer out of a cereal box and an old CD. This is a good guide to making one: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_games/spectra/makeGrating.htm

      Spectrometers are great because they allow you to split light up into different colours, like a prism does. People like me, who study planets, use this to identify which gases are in the planet’s atmosphere, because different gases block out particular colours of light.

    • Photo: Jose Brandao-Neto

      Jose Brandao-Neto answered on 16 Nov 2019: last edited 16 Nov 2019 10:18 am

      I like the one where you dig holes in jelly mounds without a spoon! Just learned about it this week and will totally add it to my repertoire! (Thanks, David Aragão@diamond for the idea)
      .
      ===
      how to do it – do it at home!
      ===
      You make 2 pots of jelly: one using animal gelatine, the other with a non collagen jelly powder.
      .
      Then you get 2 pineapple slices and lay one on top of each jelly mound. Leave overnight and the animal jelly mound will have been dug through by the pineapple while the other won’t!
      .
      It might be used to identify non vegan marshmallows!
      .
      ===
      UNDER THE HOOD
      ===
      This is because pineapples are rich in a protein called bromelain, which is a protease, meaning a protein that destroys other proteins. And collagen, an animal protein, is the material that causes the jelly to gel. Bromelain destroys the collagen and makes the jelly dissolve.
      .
      This experiment shows that there are proteins that can have chemical activity and that they may only reacts with particular things – in this case it acts on one jelly mound but not on the other.
      .
      ===
      Extra info: proteins, enzymes and medicines
      ===
      Actually, this is very close to how medicines and pesticides work. The jellys would be the medicine and bromelain, the target protein for a disease. Animal jelly would ‘work’ while the synthetic one, wouldn’t work as a drug.
      .
      Proteins whose main function is to react/be involved in chemical reactions are called enzymes.

    • Photo: Sameed Muhammed

      Sameed Muhammed answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      My favorite experiment is making oobleck, a special kind of substance that acts both like a solid and a liquid (also called a non-Newtonian fluid). Making it is very easy. Mix one part water with 1.5 to 2 parts cornstarch. You can find more details here:
      https://www.livescience.com/21536-oobleck-recipe.html

      I won a science fair one time by making enough oobleck to fill an entire swimming pool…the kids who attended the science fair were playing in it and simply loved it!

Comments

  • Photo: anon-226278

    anon-226278 commented on :

    And can u show me more experiments?

  • Photo: Freya

    Freya commented on :

    In the summer between my sixthform years I got onto a Nuffield Foundation Research Placement (highly recommend). I got to work on the development of a small project in “Galaxy Zoo” with “merging galaxies”. Galaxy Zoo was the first project which then lead to bigger citizen science projects in the “zooniverse”: https://www.zooniverse.org/ You can make an account and sign in, and contribute to different science projects. This could be counting penguins for biologists, correcting records from weather observations or classifying galaxies! You can either leave it there, or you can go further and explore what you have been looking at in greater depth.
    If you want something more hands on try making a cloud in a bottle! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G70y90BVes4