• Question: Is it a long process when you do tests

    Asked by anon-190778 to Matt, Maia, Lyndsay, Liam, Dionne, Brendan on 7 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Liam Taylor

      Liam Taylor answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      It depends on the test! In my past research, I spent every day for 4 months looking under the microscope at tiny organisms called amoebae. But then I also have done experiments that take a single afternoon. Both are very valuable 🙂

    • Photo: Dionne Turnbull

      Dionne Turnbull answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      Some take an hour, some take months! And usually in science, you have to repeat things a lot to make sure that you got an accurate result. If you do an experiment multiple times and get the same result then you can be more confident that your discovery is true!
      Some of my experiments take a really long time because you have to wait for plants to grow first, so you plant them, then keep busy with other things while you wait!

    • Photo: Brendan Marrinan

      Brendan Marrinan answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      I send our samples to a lab to do the tests, some take 3 days, others take 2 weeks. I have had to wait a really long time for some tests.

      Tests in the field range from a couple of minutes to several hours for me, there is a test called a soakaway where you dig a hole 3m deep and 3m wide, fill it full of water and measure how long it takes for the water to drain into the ground. This is a brilliant test to do in the summer because you have to spend all day sitting in the sun next to a big hole full of water.

    • Photo: Matt Bower

      Matt Bower answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      We dont actually do tests ourselves – we check over the tests that Scottish Water and others so – but basically, some water tests are really quick (almost instant) and others take much longer – running overnight perhaps. And as Dionne says, sometimes you have to repeat tests to make sure you are getting the right answer!

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