What is the craziest experiment that you have ever done?

Question: What is the craziest experiment that you have ever done?
- Keywords:
  experiment,
  work
Asked by anon-319777 on 10 Mar 2022.
- Rebecca Davies answered on 10 Mar 2022: last edited 10 Mar 2022 6:42 pm
  
  Not too crazy in terms of the actual experiment itself, but I once had to make a chemical that required a 100% nitrogen environment (instead of the usual 78% in the air). We ended up blowing up party balloons with nitrogen gas and strapping them over test tubes so that it looked like we were having a party in the chemical cabinet.
- Mary Clarke answered on 10 Mar 2022:
  
  Trying to sort out one cell from 50 million cells that nobody believes really exists and showing that this cell is a REAL stem cell
- Amy Worrall answered on 10 Mar 2022:
  
  Not necessarily crazy but definitely weird- I do part of my work with ear wax which is super gross! We’re trying to translate it to use in hearing tests!
- Elpida Vounzoulaki answered on 11 Mar 2022:
  
  I don’t do experiments as I am an Epidemiologist and in my job we use code to understand our data which helps us understand the disease.
  
  The craziest thing I have done is using code to build a model that predicts which people will get diabetes, and how less people will get diabetes if we get them to change their lifestyle (diet, exercise). 🙂
- Emily Clarke answered on 11 Mar 2022:
  
  I have to be honest I haven’t done anything too crazy! Unfortunately we have to prioritise the safety over things looking cool, and having big whiz bangs and pops! However I have done some very cool looking experiments where things change colour!
- Chigozie Onuba answered on 11 Mar 2022:
  
  All the experiments I have done has been very useful in patient diagnosis and treatment. I won’t say they are crazy but interesting.
- Sara Luzzi answered on 12 Mar 2022:
  
  Once I had to purify some special RNAs from yeast cells, and these RNAs were so delicate I had to make sure the cells were kept freezing cold. A step of the experiment required the cells to be “grinded” to a fine powder so I dipped them in liquid nitrogen to make them create tiny icy bubbles! This way I could grind them and keep them cold at the same time.
- Elmira Mohit answered on 14 Mar 2022:
  
  Craziest experiment was when we did a small experiment to pass some time waiting for larger ones in the lab. It was freezing random objects in dry ice which was extremely fun! Wore our safety goggles just in case 😀
- Leon Willis answered on 14 Mar 2022:
  
  I remember doing a chemistry practical as an undergraduate where we had to keep everything away from oxygen because one of the reagents would catch fire if it got exposed to the air! We had to use a syringe to take it out of a sealed bottle, then mix dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) and acetone (found in nail varnish remover) together to make a very cold (-78 degrees C) bath to keep everything cool. We did all of this in a nice new lab at Uni with lots of safety equipment. I don’t work with anything too dangerous anymore, so this experiment sticks out for me as being the craziest I’ve done!
- Gareth Nye answered on 15 Mar 2022:
  
  All my experiments seem crazy!
  
  I take a placenta from a pregnant mum after birth and put tubes and sensors in to keep it “alive” like it was in the mum during the pregnancy. Then I use probes to measure oxygen on the inside
- Sophie Langdon answered on 15 Mar 2022:
  
  I work with radioactivity and try to understand how we can use it for treatments which I always find a bit mad because most the time people view radioactivity as being bad for you!
- Rebecca Locke answered on 16 Mar 2022:
  
  I don’t really do any real-life experiments anymore, but at university we did a strange experiment where we put cockroaches together to see if they would fight each other!

Question: What is the craziest experiment that you have ever done?

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