• Question: What is the most interestiing thing you have discovered whilst working?

    Asked by Hattie to Alison, Jonny, Hannah, MarthaNari, Paul on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Shannon, _Ghosty_3lena_.
    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Actually the most interesting things I have discovered while doing science isn’t necessarily what I’ve found whilst doing my work. It’s what I realise other scientists have done.

      I’ve been stuck on some work for a few months now and today I went to the library to look at a book and I found that someone solved my problem in 1952 – Amazing! He wasn’t even trying to solve the same problem I was.

      One thing I found out doing my work that is quite cool is that all of the skin cells that you can see on your skin is effectively dead. That’s weird

    • Photo: Alison Whitaker

      Alison Whitaker answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      So many things! I think the most interesting thing (for me) was when I was doing some research a few years ago. It was about how flexible somebody is can be for different reasons. Some people have bones shaped a particular way, also the condition of your muscles makes a difference. What I found interesting though was that some people have an alteration in their genes that alters how much elastin is in their ligaments (ligaments hold our bones on to each other and elastin is one of the things they are made of and is the ‘stretchy stuff’). This gene also impacts our nerves and can slow down the body’s muscular reaction times. However, it can be trained – with ballet!

    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 25 Jun 2015:

      I managed to make polythiomethylaniline nanofibres by electrospinning! Yay! No one else ever had before, so that was really cool.

      To be honest most of the interesting things I’ve discovered have been like that – stuff that’s kind of obscure but really interesting when you are very involved in the science.

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