• Question: have you ever did an experiment that made u cry because of ur projress?

    Asked by simone2001 to Alan, Deepak, Francesca, Lilly, Nick on 10 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Francesca Day

      Francesca Day answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Yes! It’s a bit embarrassing I guess, but I have cried both in sadness and happiness because of experiments! It can be very frustrating when things don’t work, but it’s worth it for how great it is when you solve the problem! It makes me really happy to discover something new about the universe!

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      I get very frustrated when things don’t work, but I’ve never cried because of my work. I’m fortunate that I enjoy my job so much that no matter how bad things are going it could never be so bad as to make me cry.

    • Photo: Deepak Kar

      Deepak Kar answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Tears of joy or sorrow? 😉
      Well, I would say both happen. Sometimes things dont work the way I want it to, and that makes me very frustrated. Sometimes I get such a beautiful result that I indeed feel like crying. As I said, no two days are the same in our work, and that is what I love about it!

    • Photo: Lilian Hunt

      Lilian Hunt answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      I’ve never cried but I have had a handful of moments where I sat and stared at my results thinking ‘what on earth has gone wrong?!’. When something goes wrong it can be really frustrating but it can also drive you to shake it off, have a cup of tea, re-think your ideas and try again! Eventually it will work and that feeling makes up for all the hard work getting to that point.

    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      When things are going wrong, normally its just frustrating. The important thing is to continue the experiment until you finish it.

      Sometimes you get an answer and it’s not the one you were hoping for, which can be really disappointing. But if you’ve done the experiment right, then the answer is right and you can’t argue with it. You can’t change the laws of physics, as a famous engineer once said.

      On the other hand, many times I have laughed with happiness, because I’d just figured out a science problem or analysed data from a science experiment that suddenly made sense.

Comments