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Asked by anon-233086 to Varun, Sammie, Rebecca, Anna, Alin, Adam on 20 Nov 2019.
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Samantha Firth answered on 20 Nov 2019:
I was doing science show all about fire and explosions and this involved some experiments with rather dangerous things! I’m talking fireworks juice, gunpowder and fire tornadoes!💥Well, i got to an experiment where i was blowing fire out of a shower head through a garden hose which ends in a 1.5 meter plume of fire – and i realised, as i was blowing into the hose, that i had no safety goggles on – i had forgotten to put them on. I panicked, flinched and pulled my hand back, pulling the fire towards my face, singeing my eyebrows in the process! 😳🔥 It was entirely my own fault and i was fine, just slightly crisped! I made sure i never forgot my goggles after that! 🤓
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Varun Ramaswamy answered on 20 Nov 2019:
Every week, I work with powerful electron beams and uranium salts.. both of these are powerful enough to create nuclear bombs that can blow up the whole city if I make even a tiny mistake! That’s why I and many scientists like me are trained for a year before we handle these powerful instruments by ourselves… So it is really thrilling to be in the jaws of danger everyday, but I also need to be reeeeeally careful. 🙂
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Rebecca Shaw answered on 20 Nov 2019: last edited 20 Nov 2019 3:31 pm
My job isn’t very dangerous! Which is good because I’m probably the most clumsy person I know so I’d be no good with dangerous stuff.
I do quite often work with nasty chemicals, if you read up about some of them they can be quite scary and have the potential to cause cancers (carcinogens), alter your DNA (mutagens) or can be very toxic or flammable!
I also work with bunsen burners a lot which is quite dangerous for me – as I said I’m very clumsy! When you work with bacteria and fungi, you have to pass things over a flame to sterilise them. It’s to stop there being bugs everywhere and generally just make your environment and equipment sterile. And stops anything getting into you!
I’ve worked with different strains of bugs and fungi that have been known to infect humans too so I guess you could say that is pretty dangerous! Stuff like E-coli, Salmonella, Candida and Aspergillosis… loads of horrible beasties! -
Alin Elena answered on 21 Nov 2019:
managed to flood a lab when i was in university… it is incredible how fast you can be in water above your ankles when you have a high powered pump. Took us 3 days to clean and start the experiment again… that was my last time when I did an experiment you can imagine.
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Anna Kalorkoti answered on 22 Nov 2019:
Like Rebecca, I work with some pretty nasty chemicals! The worst ones can cause some serious lung damage, and they’re also transparent & don’t smell of anything, which makes it hard to know if you’re breathing them in or not… so we have to be VERY careful with how we handle those. Any time they’re opened in the lab, we all have to be wearing protective gear: a full-body suit and a hood that covers our face, attached to a tube that pumps in clean, safe air. So even when we are doing dangerous things, my job is good at making sure the danger is as small as possible.
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