• Question: from the hypothese you have created, how often do you see the result you are expecting in the experiment?

    Asked by kinetickate to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 22 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      We have yet to definitely determine or deny the result we are looking for – we need more results (statistics). My research is all about probability and the only way we can build up a picture of what’s going on in the bizarre small quantum world is to take lots and lots of pictures of how particles behave. From all these pictures we must then understand the character behind the particles. We may see what we are looking for but unless we see it enough times then we can be certain if it is just a fluke or indeed physics that we are trying to measure.

    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      Usually the experiments I do don’t seem to give the results I expect! But that’s mainly because most of the experiments I do are trying to figure out why the machines I build are broken. So every hypothesis is a guess and we have to keep on doing experiments to figure out what’s going on.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      hi kinetickate,

      At diamond we mainly collect data to try and work out what things are, so for us it is more about collecting data and using it to work out what shape, or structure something has. So what we need to do is make sure we collect enough data of the right type to make sure that we get a good enough answer when we process the results, i.e we need more data for a higher quality result, but we can use less data for something where we don’t need to know quite a precisely.

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