• Question: what is the most dangerous experiment?

    Asked by keeble to Jo, Donna, Mark, timcraggs on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by aammyy, francescaxx.
    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi Keeble. Good question. Danger is my middle name.

      I think the most dangerous experiments involve ones where radiation is emitted. It might not sound as flashy but bear with me on this one. As a chemist, you can have a big fire but you can put that out quite easily. Something might explode and that’s dangerous but you might be given some warning before it does so you can run. Run very fast in the opposite direction and save yourself and others.

      You don’t get much warning with radiation.

      It’s is a funny one because most of the time you don’t know you’ve been irradiated. There have been scientists carrying out experiments and then at the vital moment they have literally slipped and their actions caused the whole room to be irradiated. The people seem pretty fine for a few days but then without much warning, you’ll just keel over and die. Have you heard of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster Just read the first bit to get an idea.

    • Photo: Tim Craggs

      Tim Craggs answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Space travel is pretty dangerous, so anything involving that! All experiments carry risk though, if I looked into the lasers I use for long enough it would fry my eye, so that is pretty dangerous. If we are going to try and do something that is dangerous, we do everything we can to minimize the risk to ourselves and to others, so hopefully even experiments that could be dangerous are made safer by the way we do them.

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