• Question: How many times have you been through the same process of doing the same thing to get a right answer.

    Asked by to Kate, Kieren, Rowena, Roy on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Well, I have made 500 samples in my log, so I guess more than that to find a material that does what I want! In terms of very specific repeat reactions… you’d be surprised by the variation in results (it really is as bad as it seems in school) – I guess normally about 2-20 times I repeat an experiment to get some data.

    • Photo: Roy Adkin

      Roy Adkin answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      My last synthesis didn’t work at all as expected…in fact the molecule I needed just wasn’t being produced. I changed things a little each time to see if things changed but the reaction didn’t take place. As the synthesis was not essential to my work at that time I decided to get other work done and go back to it with a fresh mind. So I don’t have the right answer yet…but I will. Oh yes…you mark my words…I will 😉

    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Far too many! Not just to get the right answer but to get something to work the same three times over within a reasonable error, well in my PhD thesis is one graph that took me 3 months and about a thousand experiments.

      I just worked out today that the project I have been doing for the last 3 months, I have done 4320 experiments and 5 turned out the way I would have liked. These ones did not give the same result when I repeated them, so unless they do with this final batch I will have to conclude that it really isn’t going to work the way I want and move onto something different. Thankfully for this one I already know why it isn’t working the way I want but that didn’t stop me trying!

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