• Question: Have you ever done a very risky experiment?

    Asked by anon-292699 on 22 Apr 2021.
    • Photo: Steve Briddon

      Steve Briddon answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      The safety of experiments is really carefully controlled in the lab. So whilst we do experiments that could be dangerous, we have to put things in place to make sure we can do them safely.

      Having said that, we do work with some very powerful lasers and sometimes radioactivity. It can be very nerve-wracking to do these knowing the potential dangers. Big lasers can burn your skin or hurt your eyes, for instance. I did once work in a lab where someone spilt some radioactive chemical on them and had to go into an emergency shower in the lab. They were fine – but had a wet trip home as they didn’t have any spare clothes!

    • Photo: Ross Low

      Ross Low answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      Hi Erin,

      I agree with Steve, sometimes we even have to have special training to make sure things are as safe as possible. I would say that most of the time it’s the things that seem safe that can actually be the most dangerous because you let your guard down.

      I once put some dry ice (carbon dioxide that is frozen solid and very cold) in a box and closed it. the carbon dioxide started to warm up and turn to gas and expanded and caused the box to explode! Luckily nobody was hurt but it happened because I wasn’t concentrating.

    • Photo: Ed Peake

      Ed Peake answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      We always risk assess everything to make sure things are as safe as possible. But I’ve handled Urainium-235 (safely) 🙂 Sometimes things do go wrong. I currently work in MRI which is basically a massive magnet, we screen everyone and everything before it goes in the magnet room to make sure accidents don’t happen.

      This was what could happen (they use a watermelon in the video!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plvIEf7JsKo&ab_channel=ZaheerAbbas

    • Photo: Rebecca Reed

      Rebecca Reed answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      The others have mentioned it but yes all experiments, chemicals, and equipment have really strict risk assessments to make sure that the people working with them are safe. There are some things where the risk can only be minimised, instead of ruled out completely, for example I store batches of my cells in liquid nitrogen to keep them ‘asleep’ so I can take them out and use them later without them getting too old. Liquid nitrogen is kept at around -200 degrees Celsius, so is extremely cold, and not safe to touch without special gloves. I’d say the riskiest part for me is trying to lift my rack of cells out of the liquid nitrogen tank because it’s quite tall, and I’m short (a stool helps though).

    • Photo: Rosie Goodburn

      Rosie Goodburn answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      Like Ed, I work with MRI. It’s true that such a strong magnetic field is very dangerous in terms of something we call the projectile effect! It means that objects which are “ferromagnetic” (things that a magnet will stick to) are liable to fly out of your hands, through the air, towards the scanner with speed – striking the scanner or anything in its path with a potentially deadly force!
      .
      Other types of scanners, like CT scanners, generate radiation that hospital staff have to make sure they aren’t exposed to too much, because a build-up of radiation exposure is harmful over time. On the other hand, MRI does not present this risk since it does not use high-energy radiation. So it’s ironic that MRI could do harm much faster by a flying “projectile”, even though it’s generally thought of as “safe”!

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