• Question: what experiment do you like the best?

    Asked by deed535muns6 on 15 Oct 2025. This question was also asked by moas535muns6, yuck535muns6, spat532ecus87, surf532tods9, fora532tref36, tost532nays97, gude532agha26.
    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 15 Oct 2025:

      My favourite experiment is the Iodine Clock Experiment, where the liquid changes colour after a set period of time. There is another experiment called the Yellow Blue Switcheroo that does something similar, but I never got to do that one at school.

    • Photo: John Easton

      John Easton answered on 15 Oct 2025:

      Probably the one that gives me the insight I need to solve a problem. We run lots of different tests and collect lots of data to try and understand why things work in the way they do. That then helps us identify the next set of tests to run. And eventually, we get that glimmer of insight that helps us understand how to solve a problem that a customer is facing.

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 6 Nov 2025:

      Some scientists would say the ones that work. I think even if an experiment fails it is tailing you something useful and you learn from it.

    • Photo: Daniel Chernick

      Daniel Chernick answered on 7 Nov 2025:

      Quite a bit of my research was about this process called pyrolysis (where you’re essentially burning something in the absence of oxygen). Because of this, I spent a lot of time burning micrograms of samples (like tree barks, coconut husks and other left over plants) in a very safe and controlled way – and analysing the different chemicals that are made when the cell’s structures break down.

    • Photo: Luke Humphrey

      Luke Humphrey answered on 20 Nov 2025:

      Michelson Morley is cool. Deceptively simple experiment to determine our relative velocity compared to the universal aether, which ended up showing that there’s no such thing as a universal aether.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment

    • Photo: Margaret Duff

      Margaret Duff answered on 22 Dec 2025:

      I do a lot of computational experiments – I find they are as frustrating but also as rewarding as physical experiments

    • Photo: Eliza Karlowska

      Eliza Karlowska answered on 19 Jan 2026:

      I experimented a lot with weather and ocean models. For example, I changed how temperature is distributed within the upper ocean and saw what the effect on the atmosphere was!

    • Photo: Millie Race

      Millie Race answered on 20 Jan 2026:

      I enjoy any experiment that gives me the opportunity to look at tissue or cells under a microscope and take pretty pictures! I love being able to see cells and tissues up close because it can tell you so much about how the tissue works.

    • Photo: Martin Pike

      Martin Pike answered on 2 Feb 2026:

      I think that Herschel’s discovery of infrared light is ground-breaking – the first time that someone used a detector to find and measure something they could not see and only barely knew was there.
      He made a spectrum of light, using a prism and projected it over a number of thermometers, trying to find which colour (frequency) was transmitting the heat. He found it was the thermometer that was beyond the red end that got hottest. This is what we now call infrared – ‘light’ at a frequency just lower than red light.
      This set off a search for other types of ‘light’ – what we now call electromagnetic waves. From gamma waves to radio waves (high to low frequency/energy).

    • Photo: Michael Gillin

      Michael Gillin answered on 23 Feb 2026:

      It’s a popular answer, but it’s got to be the elephant’s toothpaste experiment, where a large volume of foam suddenly shoots out of a bottle, volcano, conical flask, or any other container.

      It happens when hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) breaks down very quickly into water (H₂O) and oxygen (O₂) gas. To help the reaction happen much quicker, we use a special substance called a catalyst (often yeast or potassium iodide, KI). The oxygen gas gets trapped in washing-up liquid, which makes lots of bubbles.

      This reaction has a nice combination of pure chemistry, spectacle, colour, and, of course, a massive explosion.

    • Photo: Pratibha Gautam

      Pratibha Gautam answered on 26 Feb 2026:

      I love when I do some mixing. Cooking is the best experiment I do. Just add a bunch of ingrediennts in whatever you like quantities and then everytime you have created yourself a beautiful masterpiece. Doing experiments in lab feel the same. You just mix some stuff and give it some time and conditions an wait for a wonder to explore.

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