do you likie doong dangorus experements

Question: do you likie doong dangorus experements
- Keywords:
  experiment
Asked by stansfjr01 to Amelia, Jim, Liz, Prateek, Richard on 15 Jun 2011.
- Jim Caryl answered on 14 Jun 2011:
  
  I don’t really like doing dangerous experiments as they are quite stressful, but we don’t really do experiments that we would consider ‘dangerous’ as we simply wouldn’t be allowed to do them by our health and safety office. We have to do everything we can to minimise the risk of harming ourselves, or others. We also need to spend a lot of time disinfecting and sterilising the materials we work with so that they don’t infect people.
  
  That being said, even with our precautions I do have to work with some quite risky material, usually involving bacteria that have come from hospital patients who are either dying, or have died, because of it. This is usually because these people are already very ill, and the bacteria are the last straw. The bacteria are often resistant to all the antibiotic medicine that failed to kill it, so I’d prefer not to have them on me.
  
  Whilst we take full precautions to avoid getting of the bacteria on us, it can be a little stressful when you have a litre of it growing in a bacterial soup next to you. In fact, it’s would be typical that on a Sunday night prior to starting work with a load of potentially harmful bacteria on Monday, I always manage to cut myself whilst cooking; clumsy! Then I have to really wrap the cut up with plasters, and wear extra gloves – very annoying, but the bacteria I work on like to get in cuts.
- Amelia Markey answered on 14 Jun 2011:
  
  We’re not really allowed to anything that’s too dangerous and lots of forms need to be checked and signed make sure that things aren’t dangerous and if they are then we need to know how to deal with things if they go wrong.
  
  The most dangerous bit of my work is probably the high voltage work for my device so I could get a bit of an electric shock but we make sure everything is safe and enclosed so that shouldn’t happen. I also work with human cells. Lots of people in our building work with primary human samples which means they are tissue or blood that come straight from the patient so they need to be checked to make sure they don’t have any nasty viruses and we all have vaccinations just in case.
  
  I did always like the experiments in school where our chemistry teachers used to make fireworks or mini explosives 🙂 they looked dangerous but they probably weren’t too bad.
- Richard Badge answered on 14 Jun 2011:
  
  One of the important aspects of science is to carefully plan your experiments, and know what the outcomes might be. In that way scientists generally avoid doing anything that could be dangerous.
  
  We do work with quite a lot of chemicals that could be harmful so we always take care to know the risks before we start, and to make sure we wear appropriate safety equipment (lab coats, gloves, safety glasses).
  
  I’ve never really had a bad accident in the lab, although in the early years of being a PhD student I did do an experiment involving separating DNA using high voltages (~2000 Volts). Unfortunately part of the equipment was damaged and so the liquid that was supposed to carry the electric current leaked out, and the apparatus caught fire (just a little bit!). I was in the lab, so turned it off straight away, but it made a bad smell and there were pretty sparks!
  
  That taught me to always check my equipment carefully and that if there was any doubt as to the safety of an experiment, not to do it! We all want to have long productive careers in science, not go out with a bang!
  
  Richard
- Lizzard O'Day answered on 15 Jun 2011:
  
  Dangerous experiments may sound cool but they’re not that fun. It’s a lot of stress and care that has to make sure everything is done right and nothing (or no one) will be potentially harmed from an experiment. We do use a lot of dangerous chemicals, especially radioactive materials and part of my lab works with viruses- so a lot of precaution has to go into to making sure everything is safe and secure.. you do what you have to do to get the experiment done but safety really does come first. 🙂

Question: do you likie doong dangorus experements

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