• Question: How would your research be helped if you won the money?

    Asked by sarah15 to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      My money probably won’t help my research – the experiments I run usually cost tens of thosands of pounds to run and £500 wouldn’t go very far! However £500 will go VERY far in helping me tell students like yourself about what the science is I research!

      You might be thinking why this is important – well, the main reason is, whether you choose to become a scientist or not is, that one day you will be a voter, and you will also make decisions then on which governments to vote for – those governments also chose how much money goes into science research! What we hope to do is to tell you about how important science is in not just only improving our technology and making our lives better, but about expanding our whole understanding of the universe and how it works!
      One day you might even have a job like a manager or politician yourself, you will have to make decisions on where money is spent too!

    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      Hi Sarah, thanks for your question.

      My idea with the money is to give away two prizes of £250 to the best proposals I get for science projects from you guys.

      In real terms, £500 isn’t a huge amount of money for research, although it could perhaps pay for some flights for me to travel to a conference to discuss my work with others. But in this case, we are told we’re supposed to spend the money on ‘outreach’, which I interpret that we’re not allowed to spend it on ourselves!

      So the money won’t help my research, but it will help yours!

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      Well my specific research wouldnt be helped exactly, but planetary and space science as a whole would be helped. The reason this is is because hopefully if I win and you guys come to my “space camp” then some of you might be inspired to become scientists too, which would mean more people investigating planets and stuff like that in the future 😀

    • Photo: Robert Simpson

      Robert Simpson answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      To do my research I have to enlist the help of the public – do spending money on outreach activities (which is what the £500 is for) would hopefuly get more people interested in science and therefore more people interested in helping me.

      I want to use the £500 to try and put something into space, with the help of the public, and try and do a massive, spread-out experiment.

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