• Question: What does the testing process involve?

    Asked by asks521trek to dimplepathania, charlotteslade on 1 Jul 2025.
    • Photo: Charlotte Slade

      Charlotte Slade answered on 1 Jul 2025:

      That is a fantastic question, and it gets right to the heart of what being a scientist is all about. The testing process is my favourite part of the job, because it’s basically like being a detective trying to solve a puzzle.

      Think of it like trying to bake the perfect cake.

      1. The Idea & The Plan:
      You start with a big idea (“I want to invent the world’s best waterproof material!”). Your first step is to come up with a plan, which is like your recipe. Based on what you already know, you guess that a certain combination of chemicals might work.

      2. The First Experiment:
      You then go into the lab and create a small piece of this new material. This is like mixing the ingredients and baking your first cake. You are bringing your idea to life.

      3. The Real Test:
      Now, the detective work starts. To test a “waterproof” material, what would you do? You’d throw water at it! In the lab, we do the same thing, just with very precise machines. We might spray it with water for 100 hours straight, or try to scratch it, or see how strong it is. We measure everything very carefully.

      4. The Result & The Clues:
      The test gives you a result. Maybe your material was waterproof for a while, but then it started to leak. Or maybe it was super strong, but not very flexible. This is the most important part! A test that “fails” isn’t a failure at all. It’s a clue. It tells you what to investigate next.

      5. The Next Test:
      That clue helps you change your recipe. You might think, “Okay, the leak happened after 50 hours. What if I add a tiny bit of this other chemical to make it stronger?” Then you run the whole test again.

      In my job, we do this over and over. That simple loop of Idea -> Build -> Test -> Learn is behind almost every single invention you can think of, from the screen on your phone to the technology that helps doctors see inside the human body.

      So really, the testing process is a creative adventure of having an idea, trying it out, and using the results like a detective to figure out what to try next.

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