• Question: can sciencetist inveant what they want???

    Asked by victor9 to Austin, Kirsty, Nicola, Nike, Sarah on 20 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Nike Dattani

      Nike Dattani answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      They sometimes try, but if what they want is purple monkey with 17 legs, they won’t be able to make that ='(

    • Photo: Austin Elliott

      Austin Elliott answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      Yes, my effort to make a machine to return me to being 23 years old has been a non-starter too…

      More seriously, as a scientist you do get a lot of freedom as to what you work on. Though getting someone to give you the money to try – research costs money, for people’s wages, and equipment (like supercomputers?), and for laboratories – means you don’t have total scope. People tend to want to know what you did with their cash!!

      Some slightly boring stuff about how you get the money to do science is over here.

    • Photo: Kirsty Ross

      Kirsty Ross answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      It depends on how inventive the science is! Some people work on very fundamental research that has no obvious practical applications. This may make it difficult to invent something to help you or I, but they might invent a theory that explains everything! Others work on research that is ‘applied’ and it is therefore more likely to result in an invention. Often in research, you discover something that makes you go ‘hmmm that’s odd’ and those results are often the ones that lead to new inventions. If you are good at spotting those odd results and try to understand them, then that would help you to invent lots of different things.

      In terms of inventions, if YOU have an idea in your head right now then I recommend Quirky.com
      . They allow you to submit designs, develop them and then turn them into products. You then get a cut of the sales!

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