• Question: do you have something you do when you are doing a experiment like listening to music

    Asked by 12reado to Duncan, Grant, Julie, Nik, Rachel on 13 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Grant Campbell

      Grant Campbell answered on 13 Mar 2013:


      No, listening to music is a distraction. Good experimental science requires two things:

      i) being methodical, so that you do the same things in the same way over and over, so that you get good experimental results;
      ii) being observant, so that you notice what’s going on.

      (Also, being creative, to think up the good experiment in the first place. But that’s before you get into the lab, so the distraction of listening to music doesn’t apply here, although filling your mind with meaningless noise is likely to lessen the opportunity for creative ideas.)

      In doing science, you are trying to focus on what you are doing, not trying to pretend you’re somewhere else!

      Getting really good, reliable experimental results is actually really difficult – getting bad results is easy – anyone can do that! But to get really good results, you do have to think carefully and focus hard. I often say to my students “Any idiot can walk into a lab and produce numbers – if you press the buttons and read the meters, it’s guaranteed that you’ll get numbers. But it takes a good experimentalist to get numbers that are meaningful.” And often my job as a supervisor of researchers is not to believe what they tell me, but to doubt their results until they are demonstrated to be valid.

    • Photo: Julie Bland

      Julie Bland answered on 15 Mar 2013:


      Hi, I agree with Grant even if I need to confess that I listen to music when I have to wait for things to finish. I know that especially when I am writing report which I found difficult, I need music as it, strangely, help me to concentrated but everybody is different. But you shouldn’t do anything that distract you as you often work with dangerous stuff such as acid or dangerous equipment.

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