• Question: what do you find most fascinating about your work

    Asked by beckicookie to Dean, Jess, Luisa, Sian on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sian Foch-Gatrell

      Sian Foch-Gatrell answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      I love being able to be part of something that works towards a bigger picture of something potentially very important. But very exciting as well. I am also rally excited to be able to use a new type of technology. I guess everyday can be different and knowing what you are working towards can make you feel good.

    • Photo: Luisa Ostertag

      Luisa Ostertag answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      I think I have written similar things before but:
      the challenge of new things every day! Some days I will go to work in the morning, expecting an average day and might go home in the evning because something became clear, I had a good idea, I discussed my work with others and suddenly it made sense, things like that. – The AHA effect.
      And there is something new to learn most of the days – I always feel really proud once I have mastered a new technique or new machine. 😉
      In my work specifically I love to work with human volunteers and examine their blood.

    • Photo: Dean Whittaker

      Dean Whittaker answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      That what we do works. We shoot neutrons into materials, then measure them when they come out and from that work out the structure. And we know it works because we can check it with other methods… But to make neutrons it’s a huge effort, to measure them is difficult and to make clean and perfect samples must be impossible. Yet we still get the right answers, there’s so much that could go wrong!

    • Photo: Jessica Housden

      Jessica Housden answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      To think about the bigger picture; it often makes my mind boggle! What is out there and that we are really very small!
      Day to day I love seeing the spacecraft in the clean rooms being built, it always amazes me to think that they will end up in space!

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