• Question: what's the most interesting experiment you've done?

    Asked by #shakeesha to Alan, Ciorsdaidh, Lauren, Leonie, Martin, Neil, Shuo on 6 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      We recently did some experiments to explore how easily water molecules move around on a dust grain surface. People thought that water didn’t move around at the low temperatures of just a few degrees above absolute zero that we find in space. Because of some measurements we’d made relating to evaporation of water from surfaces, one of my students asked the question when do the molecules start to move. We designed a measurement to look at this and found that they moved easily over our model grain surface even at only 15 degrees above absolute zero. This has a significant impact on the picture we have now of how icy materials grow on dust grains.

    • Photo: Neil Keddie

      Neil Keddie answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      In my own work, I do some of my reactions in a special chemistry microwave (not the one you’d heat your beans in though!). This allows me to do reactions under high temperatures and pressures, which helps to make some reactions work, that don’t when you heat them normally.

      For demonstrations my favourite is the reaction between burning magnesium and dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) – here’s the video of it here, and its just as dramatic in real life: https://youtu.be/_xCbal2YyaE

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      I recently tested a new material as a catalyst for adding hydrogen to ethyne. It works better than any catalyst tested before so that was a interesting and exciting experiment!

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