• Question: hiya its larah here. what do you use to test your methods?? x

    Asked by larahj1 to Duncan, Kiran, Paul, Sarah, Sharon on 17 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Duncan Murdock

      Duncan Murdock answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      Hi Larah, that’s a great question, it’s really important to do that.

      I have been comparing my results with those of other people using different methods, then if there are any differences we can try and explain them.

    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      hey Larah, thanks for your question! To test my methods I carry out lots of experiments in the lab. To try and make stem cells, I take an egg cell and I place it in an incubator along with 2 chemicals. These chemicals make the egg divide from a single cell into a ball of about 100 cells. At this stage, you remove the middle part of the ball of cells, which is called the Inner Cell Mass. At this stage, the ball of cells, which is called a blastocyst, is about one tenth of a millimeter, pretty tiny!!! I need to use a microscope and special cutting tools that allow me to cut out the inner cell mass.
      Once the cells are made, I do various other tests on them. One of the most routine things I do is to look for the genes that are present in the cells, using antibodies, we can light up the genes in different colours, and look at these under the microscope. there are some pictures of this on my profile if you are interested!
      There are of course many other things that I use to test my methods but these are the most common!

    • Photo: Kiran Meekings

      Kiran Meekings answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      Clincial trial, clinical trials, clinical trials!!! (a clinical trial is a big test where you put a new drug in about 1500 people with teh disease to see whether it actually works and whether its safe)…

    • Photo: Sarah Mount

      Sarah Mount answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      That’s a really great question Larah! It depends on what sort of thing I’m working on. Sometimes it’s really important for a system to run quickly so we need to test how fast it is running. Other times we use maths to show that the way we want to do something it going to work.

      A lot of my work is about getting lots of small computers to work together, so there the challenge isn’t the speed but how many computers we can add to a system before it stops working properly. For that sort of system we usually use a simulator because trying something out with hundreds of small computers you have to switch on and off is really time consuming and expensive! So, it depends on the situation…

    • Photo: Paul Stevenson

      Paul Stevenson answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      I come up with models for how nuclear physics works, and run computer simulations to predict how real nuclei (the central part of atoms) work. Then I look at what happens in real experiments and see if it agrees with my models – that’s the test.

      There’s another form of test called peer review, which means that any time I tell other people about my research, it is sent to a panel of experts who look at it and ask me questions and make me rewrite it until it has satisfied them that I’ve done it all properly.

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