• Question: what life changing discoveries have you made?

    Asked by generalspaz246 to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 28 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      I would say that I haven’t made too many life-changing discoveries… in fact much of science is building up the scientific basis around an area, and sometimes only the lucky and rare scientist will come upon the final life-changing discovery after many many scientists before him or her have done work leading to that point! For example, the men who discovered the structure of DNA for the first time owed their discovery to the hard work of a women who had done many many studies before to try and get a good ‘picture’ of DNA! If Watson and Crick didn’t have her pictures of DNA to look at, they wouldn’t know the structure of DNA! So, all of science builds upon itself, and it often takes many scientists working together for many years to make a life changing discovery. Science discovery comes in tiny little steps, usually!

      What is more true for me is that science has made life changing experiences for ME! Learning science and being in the lab changed my life for the better. I learned so many things, and I learned that I could be confident and figure out problems that seem so huge at first. Science is about taking small steps toward a goal… you work hard and you run all sorts of little experiments before you take on a large project or experiment… you slowly work till the finish line! If science were a race, it would be a race of turtles, not hares!

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      Paige has this question dialled.

      You could take any major discovery in the past 10 years, and pare back at the science contained within it to find all the little building blocks that went to make the final discovery.

      As a scientist, you have to publish your work every now and again, to show the world what you’ve been doing. In order to publish you work, it was to be the first time in the world something has been done, or represent a significant achievement in the field, there are called ‘original articles’. You can also have these things called ‘reviews’ where you look at a topic and collect all the original articles about it into one place.

      So far, I’ve only published 3 original articles (where as someone further on in their career will have published hundreds!!) so I’ve done something in the world for the first time 3 times, but it’s didn’t really fully change the world – not like Crick and Watson as Paige said.

      I hope one day though my work will lead to something profound that has a good impact on the world.

    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 1 Jul 2012:

      I’ve not made any life changing discoveries apart from on a personal level, like when I discovered what a microbiology lab a t the hospital did and that I wanted to work there

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