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Asked by robyn to Kate, Kieren, Nicola, Rowena, Roy on 16 Mar 2014.
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Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 16 Mar 2014:
Yes, lots! I think most research is strange and accidental. Einstein once said “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?”
In my last project I managed to break up my crystals into layers with fluff between them by accidentally leaving them out in the lab. You could examine the fluff under a microscope.
In my current project I also accidentally found the samples changed pver time by repeating a measurement! I tried using UV-vis spectroscopy to check some green samples contained green chromium +3 only to find ONLY orange chrmium +6 in it. I am still scratching my head about why it is green… Clearly colours can be sly and deceptive!
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Nicola Rogers answered on 16 Mar 2014:
Not particularly – I had a problem with keeping my nano particles stable in solution when I added my luminescent compound – and found a solution to this when I was adding a fluorinated compound for a different reason all together. It was a result I wasn’t expecting because I wasn’t trying to solve that problem – and stumbled across it unexpectedly
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Kate Nicholson answered on 18 Mar 2014:
Well if you ask the people I work with here in chemistry they think my work with the books is a little bit odd – I mean why wouldn’t a chemist be playing in her lab and doing normal science!
In terms of what I have discovered over my career, then yes, there are always unexpected results, usually when an experiment works the way my boss wants it to! My favourite one was when I made some glycine crystals in the same pot as my oil droplets, and the oil drops stuck so well to the growing crystal the crystal just continued to grow around them, making it look like an aero bar!
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