Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory Office of Science NEWTON's Homepage NEWTON's Homepage
NEWTON, Ask A Scientist!
NEWTON Home Page NEWTON Teachers Visit Our Archives Ask A Question How To Ask A Question Question of the Week Our Expert Scientists Volunteer at NEWTON! Frequently Asked Questions Referencing NEWTON About NEWTON About Ask A Scientist Education At Argonne What do chemists do at work?
Name: ionic woman
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1999 


Question:
What do you do at work? Could you describe a typical day, please. What do you like best and worst? I dropped this question before, but haven't received an answer yet.



Replies:
This question will vary depending on the chemist. I'm a graduate student doing research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A typical day would be to set up and run some reactions that I'm studying. Each one takes about one and a half hours to complete. In the mean time, I'll do the write-up of what I'm trying to accomplish. Once the reactions are done, I have to do a lot of number crunching...calculations to figure out if the data from the instruments I'm using is valuble, makes sense, is useless, and so on. Computers so most of this work. When the calculations are done, I have to figure out why what happened, happened. There are meetings twice a week with other members of the research group and professors. There we brainstorm about what happened during the week with the projects and where we can go from what we have. Teaching duties are also intertwined in my week. Hope this helps. If you want specifics, let me know.

-Joe Schultz



Click here to return to the Chemistry Archives

NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.

For assistance with NEWTON contact a System Operator (help@newton.dep.anl.gov), or at Argonne's Educational Programs

NEWTON AND ASK A SCIENTIST
Educational Programs
Building 360
9700 S. Cass Ave.
Argonne, Illinois
60439-4845, USA
Update: February 2012
Weclome To Newton

Argonne National Laboratory