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Asked by bethbramhill to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 17 Mar 2011 in Categories: Scientist.
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Sharon Sneddon answered on 15 Mar 2011:
HI Beth,
Yeah, it’s great fun being a scientist!
You do have to use maths, but it’s not that bad. Maths was my WORST subject at school, i found it really difficult and hard to understand. I hoped that when I left school I’d never have to do any maths again.
But, once I got the hang of it, and understood why I was doing the calculations, it all started to make sense and now I dont really think what I’m doing is maths and it’s certainly not as difficult or complicated as I used to think. Also, there are lots of clever things on the computer that can do the really hard stuff for you!
Do you like maths?
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Jayne Charnock answered on 15 Mar 2011:
Yes it can be really fun, it can be stressful too those, especially when experiments aren’t working. It’s important to stay motivated and positive and to believe in your work 🙂 There’s slot of pressure to find funding to continue your research (and pay your wages!) if you work in academia (at a university), but we really do have some great times in the lab, because you become a very close team of people.
We do use some maths, I was always dreadful at it at school, but now I do it every day and my calculations have a real use to them, I find maths much easier and something I rely on alot. I still sometimes get others to check my working out though!
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James Chan answered on 15 Mar 2011:
Being a scientist is great fun, otherwise I would’ve left ages ago! I get bored easily and science easily keeps me entertained cos it’s different all the time and everyday is different.
How much maths? It also depends on what kind of research you do. For example, there are guys here who are ‘bioengineers’ – so people who combine biology with cells – they tend to do quite a bit of maths because they need to work out things like the force a bone can withstand, or how strong your explosion needs to be to break a bone! Yeah, I saw a presentation of army scientists who looked into stuff like that – pretty crazy!
I personally don’t do a lot of maths at all. Of course, you need to be able to do basic calculations to be able to say, for example, well this treatment for fracture healing made the bones heal 50% quicker. But other than that, I don’t do much.
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Emma King answered on 16 Mar 2011:
Hi bethbramhill – sometimes you have to use maths when you work in the lab, often it’s the same calculation over and over again though so you get very good at doing it! Mostly it’s just about understanding quantities – so making sure that you know percentages and units of measurement rather than massively complex calculations.
I really liked maths at school but I think I’ve forgotten all of it now, which is a shame. It would be nice to have to use maths a little bit more!
How about you? do you not like maths very much? -
Kara Cerveny answered on 17 Mar 2011:
Scientific discovery is super exciting and fun…but repeating experiments so that you know that what you’re seeing is real can get a bit tedious. Depending on the discipline, you have to use some or lots of maths; there is even an entire field called computational biology (which relies on a lot of maths).
Comments
bethbramhill commented on :
thankyou everyone 😀 i find maths really really hard but am in top science :'( Your work sounds really fun and interesting, so i was wondering if i would be okay to look into lab scientists work, but from the answers you gave me i guess its dependant on which topic of science i look into.
James commented on :
Hi Beth, you can of course look into lab scientists work – there’re always work experience people and I did that when I was at school. I think it’s best to have a look round cos then you know whether this is something that definitely rocks your boat or not!
Sharon commented on :
HI Beth,
Yes, It was only after work experience that I decided that research was what I wanted to do. It’s not even that important what specific topic of science you do work experience in, as any sort of lab will give you an idea of what it’s going to be like. You should google your local university or college and see if there are any things you fancy, then try and find some contact information on the websites, normally lab- heads have their email details on their pages, drop lots of them emails asking if they take work experience people and go for it, It also will look great on your UCAS application personal statement!