• Question: what type of scientist are you?

    Asked by simone2001 to Alan, Deepak, Francesca, Lilly, Nick on 7 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Deepak Kar

      Deepak Kar answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      Good question! I am not sure in which category I should put myself in. I am going to try nevertheless.

      Usually experimental physicists work in their lab, and perform actual experiments. Theorists sit at their desks, and do complicated math, either on their blackboard/paper or on computer. At least I grew up knowing this.

      However, when I joined this big experiment at CERN, people started calling me an experimentalist. Made sense, since I am part of the experiment, right? But the problem is, I never go down underground to fix the machine, or connect the wires – I just sit in front of my computer, and dig through the data collected. So I call myself a pseudo-experimentalist 😉

    • Photo: Lilian Hunt

      Lilian Hunt answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      I am definitely an experimental biologist. I get to be at the lab bench and do all sorts of fun experiments to look at how things develop from one cell into a fully formed fish (and hopefully relate this to humans!).

    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      I’m an astronomer. I look at stuff going around our Sun, and sometimes other stars. My job is to try and understand what’s going on – how big are those things, how far away are they, and what are they made of?

    • Photo: Francesca Day

      Francesca Day answered on 9 Mar 2014:

      That’s a tricky question! I would probably call myself a particle physicist, which means I study the smallest things in the world, the particles that we are all made of.

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      I’m an astronomer and one that uses telescopes at lot. Scientists are often divided into those that think up new theories and those that test the theories with experiments, and I’m the latter type. I read about new theories that people have thought of and then I try to test those theories with experiments. if the experiment disproves the theory then the person who thought of the theory has to go away and think of a new theory, but if the experiment agrees with the theory then everyone is happy!

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