• Question: What is the most dangerous experiment you have ever done.

    Asked by anon-174777 to Yewande, Tim, Melanie, Hayley, Carl, Alex on 12 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Seeney

      Alex Seeney answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I don’t really do dangerous experiments I’m afraid – we have something called risk assessments – these are where we think about the risks we might face when we’re working and what we can do to avoid them.

    • Photo: Tim Craig

      Tim Craig answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      Generally, the best plan is to avoid dangerous experiments – the science I do is usually designed specifically so that it isn’t dangerous. Probably the most dangerous thing I do as a scientist is fieldwork. And often, the most dangerous part of that actually comes from interacting with people (particularly driving, in a lot of places)!

    • Photo: Carl Barford

      Carl Barford answered on 15 Jun 2018:

      We actually do a lot, but in special places using special equipment. The science tells us there is a chance a reaction can go wrong; we calculate the maximum heat and pressure we could get – yes that is an easy one to do – then we put tiny amounts of the chemicals in a special piece of kit, sometimes in a special bomb shelter, and let it go.
      The inside of the area is often smeared with remnants of the event
      Once we have the information, we design a plant (reaction) that can never, ever, get to a stage it will go wrong in a bad way.

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