Have you ever failed an experiment before

Jess Buddle answered on 17 Mar 2021:

All the time! Science doesnt go right most of the time and thats completely OK!
Sometimes its our fault doing silly things, sometimes its science being science!

Felicity Hunter answered on 17 Mar 2021:

Excellent question! Yes, experiments often fail. This can feel quite frustrating sometimes when you put a lot of work into an experiment and feel like you have nothing to show for it. But it is important to remember that you can often learn just as much from experiments that fail as you can from those that work! Science is all about ‘trial and error’ meaning that if you don’t succeed the first time, keep trying until you do :). This teaches you an important skill for science called ‘resilience’ which means not giving up when things don’t work. This skill does not come naturally to most people and takes lots of practice and so it is very important to take a break when times feel challenging and come back to it later with a clear head :).

Alba Park de la Torriente answered on 17 Mar 2021:

Yes, all the time. I usually assume that I will fail my experiments the first couple of times I do them, so I try to practice and do mock experiments before doing the real one. I always learn a lot when I do these first preliminary trials, and I get less frustrated.

Callum Thomas answered on 17 Mar 2021:

Absolutely. Experiments fail all the time but you can still learn a lot from doing them. For example when I did my undergraduate research project, I was trying to do experiments on mosquitoes but lots of my mosquitoes kept dying instead! I spent a whole year trying to keep them alive but in the end I didn’t really have many good results. Luckily my supervisor was very helpful and he helped me work around my issues so I could still finish my thesis and I ended up still graduating with First Class honours.

Chris Waller answered on 17 Mar 2021: last edited 17 Mar 2021 3:59 pm

Experiments can, and often do fail. Sometimes it’s just as interesting for an experiment to fail because it can tell you something interesting that you didn’t expect to learn!
~
When I was at university I was trying to synthesise a particular drug compound and I when I performed the reaction I instead created an undesired side product. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise however as about 2 years later we needed to make that particular compound, and we now already had an effective way to do so.

Karen Burstow answered on 18 Mar 2021:

Yes! It can be really frustrating, but it happens to everyone and you can learn from it. You can also ask tutors or colleagues for help, try to figure out what you can change to try and fix it, and try again!

Jo Brodie answered on 21 Mar 2021:

Yes, and from an early age! My earliest experiments were in baking (it’s a form of chemistry!) and I remember once making a chocolate cake and forgetting to put the eggs in so the result didn’t look as expected (though still edible).
~
It’s quite common that a lab experiment might not work – especially if it’s a new technique, but even in something you’ve previously had success with and it’s just suddenly stopped working. I once spent quite a long time trying to separate a suspension of cells and cell fragments. Normally I would get nice distinct bands in my test tubes that contained the different bits neatly separated from each other but suddenly everything was refusing to separate. In the end it turned out that there was a problem with the liquid I was using – it was too acidic because the tool I’d used to measure the acidity was giving the wrong reading. So not totally my fault 🙂 It all worked fine once the tool was fixed.
~
Other times the fault might not be obvious or easy to find so then I would sit down with a colleague and ‘walk through’ the process with them to see if I’d missed or mixed up the order of the steps I needed to do, or completely misread an instruction. Sometimes, as Jess says, it’s just science being science.
~
More recently I had another baking fail, with some oat and walnut muffins (which I have made many times before). As usual I carefully weighed out the oats and walnuts and whizzed them in a food mixer to chop them up finely. Then I completely forgot to add them to the rest of the mixture, resulting in very soft un-muffiny muffins. Sometimes, as in science experiments in the lab, it helps to follow the instructions closely and use a checklist 🙂
~
Jo

Question: Have you ever failed an experiment before

Comments