• Question: what is the biggest experiment youve ever done?

    Asked by marylou123 to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Hi Marylou

      Hard to say really- depends what you mean by biggest. Take your pick from these:
      MOST EXPENSIVE
      One of my first science jobs involved me handling a chemical called recombinant interleukin 2, which back in 1986 was very rare. I had to work with a bottle containing 50 millilitres (about half a teacup) which was worth £50000. I was terrified of spilling it!

      LONGEST
      One of my experiments took 3 years to finish. we were looking at how a mother’s diet affected how long animals would live for. The animals turned out to be very healthy and lived long happy lives while we waited.

      MOST RESULTS
      I do a lot of work where we make measurements of every gene in the body all at the same time using a technique called deep sequencing. This measures 30000 genes at once and gives us so many measurements to look at that it takes months to make sense of it all.

    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      The biggest experiment I have done was in Germany when I worked on a particle accelerator. The accelerator is 50 METRES LONG (the width of a football pitch) and weighs many many tonnes.

      This accelerator fires a very fast and very bright beam of electrons which is useful for looking inside molecules. My job was to develop a method to steer the beam of electrons using big magnets.

      Because the electrons in the beam are moving so fast, they produce lots of dangerous radiation, so the whole experiment is buried in a tunnel underground to protect the scientists. We control the experiment using lots of remote controls which we operate from lots of computers in a control room above ground. There are 30 CAMERAS in the tunnel so we can measure the electrons at different places. The radiation even damages and breaks the cameras in the tunnel. We use 20 cm thick chunks of lead to protect them, but we still need to replace the cameras often.

      The beam direction is controlled using 20 HUGE MAGNETS which need 300A of electrical current to run (that’s more than 1000 LIGHTBULBS!!) . Each magnet is 1 metre wide and weighs about the same as a large car. The magnetic field from these magnets is so strong that it will pick you up and pull you into the tunnel if you are wearing any metal at all – so it’s important to remember to take your watch off!

      Each magnet costs 40,000 pounds, and the whole accelerator costs TENS OF MILLIONS OF POUNDS. A team of 30 SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS works full time to keep the accelerator operating, and many more scientists from lots of different countries come to use it.

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