What was the first thing you discovered?

Question: What was the first thing you discovered?
- Keywords:
  discovery,
  first,
  scientist
Asked by howcroae1 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 16 Mar 2012.
- Adam Stevens answered on 16 Mar 2012:
  
  The first bit of research I did was in my Physics degree. I found out in one project that if you play an educational podcast to 1st year physics students before they went to lecture it made absolutely no different to their test results!
  
  The other thing I found out is that when you tune a piano it actually sounds better if it’s not quite in tune, because our brains hear high and low notes slightly differently.
- Karen Masters answered on 16 Mar 2012:
  
  The first research project I worked on was collecting information about all the globular clusters (big collections of stars) in the local group (which are all the galaxies near us) to see if the combined properties looked a bit like globular clusters found in ellipticals. Turns out they didn’t.
  
  So we used to all think that when out galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy (and all the other little galaxies nearby) merge they’ll leave an elliptical. Our result suggested not – and in fact we now think that if there’s enough gas around the merger might just make another more massive spiral galaxy. So that’s sort of fun!
- Leila Battison answered on 17 Mar 2012:
  
  The first thing I discovered was when sexual reproduction started! Bacteria don’t reproduce sexually, but we know that most animals do – so where in evolution did it first start? I looked at the fossil record of the squishy creatures before animals to find out, and came up with two possible dates. That’s the best we can do at the moment, but it’s the firs time anyone has thought about it!
- Nazim Bharmal answered on 19 Mar 2012:
  
  The very first thing I discovered was a connection between two theories: one explained most of the way to do a particular measurement of how a star wobbles but not all the way to the end, and the second explained what happens at the end. So there was a bit in the middle that nobody talked about, and I showed, using a simple model, that there was a point that was better than anybody had thought possible.
- Catherine Rix answered on 20 Mar 2012:
  
  In my undergraduate degree I discovered a new catalyst for producing a biodegradable polymer

Question: What was the first thing you discovered?

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