Question: do you always work on computers?

Jarvist Moore Frost answered on 12 Mar 2012:

No, not always, I also do some lab work! I really like doing both, as they’re quite different ways of working. On the computer you are often having to think in a very abstract way, whereas some of the lab work is really methodical but simple. For one of my experiments I have to start by cleaning everything again and again, and polishing platinum electrodes with a rubbing paste by hand. It’s really nice just to sit at a lab bench and do this careful work without thinking too much!

I think all scientists work with computers to some extent now – we use them to process data & communicate, and the world wide web and internet has been fantastic for science (the web was originally created by a scientist at CERN to help share information across their network!).

Also, in general, I think properly understanding computers & programming them will be really important for the future. Learning to run ‘office’ programs on a computer at school doesn’t really help you that much, but understanding how to make the computer calculate things & do your work for you is really powerful!