• Question: you seem to be focused on biology, have you ever tried doing physics or chemistry?

    Asked by 0mmarzoug to Alberto, Chris, Emmanuel, Jennie, Michelle on 15 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by planbskater100.
    • Photo: Chris Whittle

      Chris Whittle answered on 15 Jun 2013:

      I used to be a teacher and I taught chemistry and physics up to GCSE level, and I studied chemistry at A-level. Some of the work I do involves a bit of chemistry, such as how chemicals interact within cells and with the materials that I use in certain experiments. For instance, I use a number of chemical reactions to look at cells and the DNA or chemicals they contain, and I need to know how these work in case they go wrong.

    • Photo: Alberto Lapedriza

      Alberto Lapedriza answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      Nowadays, science is very interdisciplinary, and problems cannot be solved by looking at them from a single perspective. Therefore, it is very common in science that biologists interact with mathematicians, chemists or computer scientists to find the answer to a question that biologists couldn’t answer alone.
      In addition, when I was studying my undergraduate degree I had to study maths, physics, chemistry, and computer science. It was quite a long time ago, but I can still remember the main things and it is helping me in my research in biology.

    • Photo: Emmanuel Amabebe

      Emmanuel Amabebe answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      yea, I did physics and chemistry as O and A level subjects

    • Photo: Michelle Taylor

      Michelle Taylor answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      It’s not usually common for scientists to switch between subjects once they begin a research career as it takes a long time to become an expert in one particular area and everyone has their own favorite subjects. But often the subjects overlap and use the same tools, for example I use chemical reactions to make lots of copies of the DNA in my insects to identify different genes that I’m interested in. Science is becoming a lot more interactive as questions become more difficult to answer and so scientists who study different subjects are starting to work together more often to share their special knowledge.

Comments