• Question: what was the first ever experiment you performed?

    Asked by imo.gen to Barbara, Matt, Ravinder, Sophie, Tristan on 9 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by alice and olya.
    • Photo: Sophie Robinson

      Sophie Robinson answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      The first experiment I remember doing was back at school in a Biology lesson when we were investigating osmosis. We had chunks of potato that we had to put into different concentrations of sugar solutions and weigh them before and after to see how much water they had absorbed. I think we were looking at the effect of solute concentration on the rate of osmosis.

      The first experiment I performed as a scientist was switching off a gene in blood cells. I had to insert a molecule, called an siRNA, into the cells by zapping them with electricity which formed holes in the cell membrane. Then I had to look at what happened to the cells afterwards. I found that switching off this gene caused the cells to commit cell suicide and burst open.

    • Photo: Matthew Moore

      Matthew Moore answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      My first experiment was exactly the same as Sophie’s!

    • Photo: Barbara Shih

      Barbara Shih answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      The first experiment I performed is cell culture (growing cells in flasks). I came back the next days and it turns out that I grew rainbow coloured mushrooms (infection) instead of human cells.

    • Photo: Tristan Smith

      Tristan Smith answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      The first one I remember was putting slices of liver into hydrogen peroxide to measure the amount of gas given off and calculate the amount of catalase enzyme present. Unfortunately by lab partner forgot to include a release tube and the flask exploded.

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