• Question: What's your favorait experament?

    Asked by rebeccacarey to Andrew, Peta, Hayley on 22 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by alexandereasdale, bubbly, zhamlyn.
    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      I love getting to use the neutron diffraction facility at ISIS. There is something exciting, beautiful and gentlemanly seeing the results come in as this huge machine does its job. We can also see things in the structures with neutrons that we can’t with X-Rays, so that is exciting.

    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Hi there! My favourite experiment is Young’s double slit experiment. You can do this experiment by having a laser light source illuminating two slits. Then a screen so you can see what goes through the slits…

      … now if you only have one slit open you get a line of illumination on your screen… if swap to cover the other slit you see a similar line just in a different place… if you open both slits then you see lots of lines because of a process called interference…

      … now this interference can be reasonably easily understood if you think of light as waves and the waves interfering with one another and causing peeks when the add together constructively and cancelling each other out in different places….

      … not comes the weird bit… this happens if you only let one photon through at a time… not only that but we see the same thing with electrons firing at the two slits even if you only let one through at a time….

      … and that is why i like Young’s double slit experiment… have a go at it yourself at school. It’s fun 😀

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      Hmmm, that’s a tough question!
      Doing experiments was my favourite part of science at school, and through University, so choosing a favourite is a little difficult – but here’s one that I think ticks all the boxes for me…

      Young’s Modulus – we got to test out loads of different materials in A-Level physics, essentially trying to push materials to their elastic limit, seeing when they break.
      We had loads of 1kg blocks and attached them to the end of a rubber band (we were on the 2nd floor) and in the end we ended up hanging it out the window the elastic band stretched so far! We also did the same with glass, we heated some capillary tubes over a bunsen burner and then stretched the glass to make it really thing, like a glass maker would do, then make hooks at either end (one for the support and one for loading the weights) and added the kg blocks.

      It was a really cool experiment – we made good predictions, the experiment was fun and there was lots of good physics to back up the results too!

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