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Asked by anon-379527 on 26 Jan 2024. This question was also asked by anon-391199, anon-391197, anon-391193, anon-380557, auks1mask.
Question: What do you find to be the most interesting part of your job?
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Rachel Edwards answered on 26 Jan 2024:
It’s often the thing I’m working on at the time. I love being in the lab and doing experiments and analysing data, so when I’m doing that I think it’s the most interesting thing. But I also really enjoy writing papers to tell people about what we’ve found, and thinking about how best to explain things. But then I also really enjoy teaching physics, and seeing it when our students understand something new! As an academic I have a really varied job, which suits me well as I very rarely get bored.
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Sophie Shaw answered on 30 Apr 2024:
Every day is different! This makes it really exciting as you never know what’s going to happen and you’re always faced with a new challenge
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Sarah-Jane Potts answered on 17 May 2024:
How varied it is! I am a research engineer at the moment, and most days are different. I spend some time teaching students, a lot of time in the lab making, testing and imaging things. I also spend some days writing grants and papers and others going around schools and providing talks and workshops on engineering.
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Rebecca Witton answered on 31 May 2024:
i love how varied it can be, a lot of my work involves similar processes but on different materials. i get to work on processing a lot of catalysts that are used in some really exciting projects such as manufacturing sustainable air fuel instead of using fossil fuels so it’s nice to be involved in such important things 🙂
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Calum Cunningham answered on 27 Jun 2024:
Practical things, like experimenting with new equipment in the lab. I actually spend most of my time on a computer, so I especially enjoy mixing things up and doing experimental work! Recently, we’ve been trying to make tiny needle-shaped specimens from metals using laser milling. It might sound straightforward, but we have to be very careful with the laser parameters in order to get the exact size and shape we need, and to not damage the sample too much with heat. We then want to examine the samples with an atom probe (a big microscope that makes a 3D picture of individual atoms in a tiny sample of material).
Comments
Barak G commented on :
One of the things I like about being a scientist is that are a lot of different aspects which interest me. for example, I currently build machine learning models that are able to predict certain biological responses from fluorescent stains in cells. We essentially colour the cell with certain colours for different elements in the cell and use the information from those colourings to characterise the cell. The models we build help us gain insight into the biological processes affecting these cells. So generally finding these models and these relations is interesting as we find new things that were not known before.
Martin M commented on :
I can’t put my finger on one “most interesting things about my job”. Rather there are several things that make it interesting for me. The first is that I get to discover new stuff… find out things that no-one else knows or has possibly even thought about. Then, I get the chance to tell other people about it… spreading knowledge amongst other scientists and the public. This sometimes involves travelling to conferences all over world or even appearing on TV. But finally, and perhaps the most fun thing about my job, is the chance I get to train the next generation of scientists. This is perhaps the best thing about my job.