• Question: How does it feel to be a scientist that is getting bombarded by curious questions from the younger generation? What questions do you get most of the time and do some questions annoy you to the brink of madness?

    Asked by MKiselova04 to Chris, Kathryn, Sarah on 16 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Chris Werner

      Chris Werner answered on 16 Nov 2017:


      Two for the price of one, boom! đŸ˜€ Its great actually to see the variety of questions, and I certainly hope that what we do here inspires you to be scientists, and its encouraging to see everyone’s interest in science!

      A lot of questions I get on here are different ways of saying what is the cure for cancer, or how do we beat cancer, or something very similar, also the differences between dark matter and regular matter, some really advanced stuff in there!

      There’s no question that ‘annoys me to the brink of madness!’ but there’s a few amusing ones I must admit, both on ASK and live chats. I often get asked these a lot on the live chats, why do you find science interesting, who was your science idol growing up, whats your day to day job etc.

      None of them are frustrating at all, as most of them were the same questions I was asking when younger, and on top of that, I learn some new things too!

    • Photo: Sarah Guerin

      Sarah Guerin answered on 16 Nov 2017:


      Ooh really interesting- I love getting asked lots of questions, and I’ve learned so much in the past two weeks from explaining so much science đŸ™‚ I think the only way you really understand science is by explaining it to other people, and I do a lot of work in schools for science.

      We have gotten asked a lot of questions about cancer during I’m a Scientist – what causes it, can we cure it etc. And loads of questions about space- black holes, wormholes, planets, stars. I have also got asked a lot of brilliant questions about my love of Taylor Swift! Outside of this I mainly get asked about applications of my research in the real world, and what I want to do in the future.

      I don’t think any particular questions have annoyed me during this event- probably because everyone here loves science and is enthusiastic. Sometimes it’s difficult to answer questions from people who are skeptical about science and aren’t really interested in your answer, just arguing with you. I hate people asking if physicists are like Sheldon Cooper!

    • Photo: Kathryn Schoenrock

      Kathryn Schoenrock answered on 16 Nov 2017:


      Haha- it’s great! You guys ask unique and interesting questions that we probably don’t get at work.

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