• Question: What sorts of problems do you come up with solutions for?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Veronica Celorrio

      Veronica Celorrio answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Being a scientist implies that you have to come up with solutions for difficult issues, but also easy ones…daily issues are normally not too bad…
      You have to be really concious of what you doing to realise why your experiment isn’t working, for example…

    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Great question Jessfeist1 and Joeyyguan!

      There are lots and lots of problems that as scientists we try to come up with solutions for – thats what makes us scientists. I am currently trying to solve the problem of water pollution caused by food companies when they process food. Other problems I’ve looked at before have been taking toxic metals out of polluted water, and trying to understand why solar cells arent as efficient as they could be….all great questions to have the opportunity to answer!

      Every scientist has different problems so you should get a good variety of answers from each of us, and will give you an idea of the range within ‘water science’ – other areas of science have other problems too!

    • Photo: Harriet Aitken

      Harriet Aitken answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hi Jessfeist1,

      I’m a PhD student, so over three years is it is job to come up with a solution to a research problem – I’m trying to come up with a new type of system to remove a chemical called arsenic using iron. So I spend a lot of time learning about what other people have done to solve the problem and coming up with ways in which I can do experiments to prove that my system is better. I also spend a lot of my time sorting out little problems to do with these experiments – for example as the concentrations of arsenic I use are so small they are very difficult to test for which is a bit of nightmare as I need to prove I have removed it! So in order to make sure my tests are correct I have to make sure all the equipment I use very very clean, so I have to use acid to clean everything and a glass cleaning solution.

      Thanks for the question, Hattie.

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hi Jess and Joey!

      Well the big one is can I make a material which soaks up enough hydrogen to run a car? That’s the big problem and it’s the end goal of everything I do in my project. I also come across lots of other, smaller problems while I’m trying to do this. They can be anything from, why isn’t my machine working (which I get an awful lot!) to why is my material behaving strangely?

      In a lot of research you tend to create more questions than you’ve answered, but the important thing is that they’re always new questions. I always think if these things were easy, then someone would have done it already!

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