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Asked by anon-257370 on 18 Jun 2020.
Question: what was your 1st scientific discovery?
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Andy Kowalski answered on 18 Jun 2020:
Guess that was why if you dipped nails onto Copper Sulphate they came out looking a different colour mainly due to electrodeposition.
This was to also stimulate my interest in transition metals and also looked at how these interact with organic molecules especially in creation of organometalics.
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Alex Holmes answered on 18 Jun 2020:
I remember doing an experiment in highschool where we sucked all the air out of some leaves so they’d float to the bottom of a flask, then when we shone light on them they’d start photosynthesising and the oxygen they’d produce would make them float up to the top. We changed light intensity and measured how long it took the leaves to go from the bottom to the top each time. That was probably the first “discovery” for me, even though scientists have known for ages that light = oxygen in plants, it was the first time that was really clear to me.
My major discovery after that was that no matter how smart someone seems they still have to ask for help and don’t know everything, that was really eye opening when I was in university.
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Adam Baskerville answered on 18 Jun 2020:
I remember when I was in year 2 or 3 I was playing with my friends on the school field and we were both kicking a ball back and forward from each end seeing how far we could kick it. My friend on the other side started clapping his hands together and I noticed how I could see his hands meet before I heard the sound of the clap. This was the first realization to me that light traveled faster than sound.
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Melanie Krause answered on 18 Jun 2020:
Great question Blake! 🙂
So apart from discoveries as a child that weren’t really ‘unknown’ but still lots of fun I think my first ‘real’ scientific finding was when I worked on my Bachelor thesis project. The lab I was in was trying to figure out how to help people with inflammatory bowel disease with a certain drug. They knew it worked but not really why and what it did. I found that giving the drug to mice causes a different immune response from the normal one in inflammation. And it seems that that difference in immune response makes the disease less painful to people with the disease. -
Luke Bryden answered on 18 Jun 2020:
I think my first ‘proper’ discovery was when I did my industrial placement year as part of my undergraduate degree. I worked in a pharmaceutical company on a research project that aimed to improve the way pain is measured in animal models of neuropathic pain and arthritis. Rats and mice naturally burrow (they seem to ‘enjoy’ it!), and I discovered that rats burrow less sand when they have osteoarthritis. This decrease in burrowing behaviour can be improved when they are given drugs to treat pain, such as morphine and ibuprofen!
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Jun Lin answered on 18 Jun 2020:
I suppose the first thing I really discovered when I was a child is that a thunder always comes after after lightning. I knew that I needed to cover my ears after I saw a lightning 🙂 The science behind this, as everyone is familiar with, is the difference in speed between sound and light.
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Alfonsina Arriaga Jimenez answered on 19 Jun 2020:
very hard question! I will say the first time I discover a new species… I was still learning so the experts described it and up my name on it! It is a very small dung beetle, but so amazing to have your name in a living thing.
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Chloe Carter answered on 19 Jun 2020:
For me it was that I could burn my name into a plank of wood with a magnifying glass, my grandad taught me this much to my mum’s annoyance! I think I was only about 8 years old as well
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Jozsef Vuts answered on 19 Jun 2020:
I kept newts in a fish tank and realised I can hand-feed them with insects. They seemed to be quick to learn that when my hand appears above the tank, it means food. Amphibian intelligence!
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Helen Roy answered on 19 Jun 2020:
It was in my back garden as a primary school child – I noticed that it took a while for colour patterns to develop when ladybirds emerged from their pupal case. This was of course already known but was exciting to me… then through my PhD I had the opportunity to make new discoveries about ladybirds and how they interact with other species – I showed that they could work alongside other species and so provide better natural pest control when with other species (such as hoverflies and lacewings) than when acting alone. Every species within an ecological system has a role – a wonderful puzzle to solve!
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Imogen Cavadino answered on 19 Jun 2020:
As I child I remember my friend and I found a snail with a strange spiky object sticking out of it in the school playground and were fascinated – now I know that this was a “love dart”, a strange missile some snails fire at each other during courtship!
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Aisling Ryan answered on 23 Jun 2020:
Great question! I guess, to me, it really depends on what magnitude we are defining the word ‘discovery’! In science, everything you do, whether it works or not is a discovery because it is adding new knowledge to this line of work. In terms of big discoveries like a new successful treatment for a disease, this sort of discovery generally takes many years and many scientists- it would never be a single person. So, to answer your question my first scientific discovery was probably my research project I did as part of my degree, as this was my first time doing my own research i.e. something new that hasn’t been discovered previously (usually during a degree you are learning skills by repeating known experiments and then you get to do your own research at the end!) My research project involved using a type of nanoparticle (very tiny) that can glow in the dark to sense the two different forms of the active ingredient in the medicine ibuprofen 🙂 (a tablet is made up of lots of different ingredients. The active ingredient is the part that does the work in our body to make us feel better. Just like the ‘sweet’ ingredient in a cake would be sugar, even though the cake is make up of lots of other ingredients too :))
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Beth Poulton answered on 25 Jun 2020:
I used to drive my mum mad wasting bubble bath, shower gel, moisturiser, etc. (Anything left next to the bath) because I’d mix them together to make “potions” to try and make the biggest bubbles!
Comments
Gulnar commented on :
Hello Blake, thanks for a great question!
My first scientific discovery was during the Master thesis project. The main aim of this project was to find new drought-tolerant wheat genotypes in Azerbaijan.
I studied the DREB (dehydration responsive element-binding protein) transcription factor, which is mainly responsible for the activation of drought resistance genes. Unexpectedly, I discovered a new isoform of the DREB gene which is only specific for wheat genotypes in Azerbaijan.