• Question: What is the most interesting experiment that you have ever done when doing your job?

    Asked by apple to Sian, Sally, SallyB, Rebecca on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Rebecca Randell

      Rebecca Randell answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      I haven’t been a scientist for very long so i have only done one experiment. My first experiment was looking at the effect of green tea on energy use during exercise. I did do some cool experiments at school which i’m sure you are doing now. Have you done any cool ones?

    • Photo: Sian Lawson

      Sian Lawson answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Either the polar bear, or the film work. Actually probably the film stuff, it’s like living on the wrong side of the looking glass.

    • Photo: Sally Fenton

      Sally Fenton answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      It isn’t one that I have done but it is one that I am doing next year! We will use a DEXA scanner which scans the whole body with X rays and allows us to look at how much fat, muscle and bone each persons body is made up of and where abouts it is in the body (stomach, arms, legs etc.). We will do this on young people aged 10-14 3 times over 1 year and see how the amount of fat and muscle they have changes in relation to the amount of football they play. We expect that those children who play more football will have less fat!

    • Photo: Sally Barber

      Sally Barber answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Thats a tricky question, i’ve done some really interesting experiements. One of them was seeing how putting weight on might effect heart function. To do this I got people to wear a 2 “pregnancy belly” on 2 different occasions, one weighed about 10kg and the other about 15kg. The participants exercised on a treadmill until they could go on no longer and we took measures of how well their heart was functioning. They did the test 3 times (on different days) once with no belly, once with the lighter belly and once with the heavier belly. It was pretty funny to watch. I also volunteered to be a participant, i wore the belly and did the tests. We found that the heart function improved when the participant had to carry more weight – even when they carried the really heavy belly! Now we are planning a study to look at what happens to heart function when people lose weight very quickly like when they have fat surgically removed.

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