• Question: do you find theory science as fun as the experiments?

    Asked by leannemari to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 15 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by matthewelliott.
    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      Yes I do. With theory I love the way that we can describe Nature in the language of maths. I enjoy going through sentence by sentence deriving the story. Experiment is a visualisation of the theory, like a movie based on a story, and is equally as fun and often adds new levels of understanding.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      Hi leannemari

      Yes Absolutely! A lot of the work I do involves using theory to try to understand experimental results. So understanding the Theory is as important as collecting the experimental data.

      Also most of the Theory I do involves lots of computers, and sometimes even PC gaming graphics cards, and what’s not fun about lots of cool computers 😀

    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      I do enjoy understanding theory, but in a different way than I enjoy experiments. I’d say experiments are more fun, because I get to work in a lab with lots of other people, and I get to do hands-on stuff. I usually do theory on my own, quietly in the office, which isn’t as much fun.

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      yeah definitely – theory and experiment go hand in hand. If it’s going to be worthwhile doing an experiment it’s good to know what theory you want to test first, so that you can design your experiment to be a good test of the theory, and so you can interpret what your results mean at the end.

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