Poll Experiment
June 18, 2012
Question: How long does it take to run an experiment? Just the data collection and basic analysis, assuming you could work exclusively on this one experiment. (if willing state your field in the comments).
For me it depends on what method I’m using, Method A is weeks to months, depending on the conditions. Method B is hours, but often includes weeks to months of pre-experiment work.
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Materials science, molecular dynamics simulations of small molecules with a pretty decent cluster available for use.
So your stuff is computationally intensive? Is that the main factor in duration?
I’m a molecular virologist. My kinetics type assays could be done in less than a day (and there are many of those), while my cell culture type assays would take a week or two to process and read. And those experiments can take a long time to get all the cells ‘just so’ prior to starting.
Algal biotechnologist. If i wanted to do an single experiment, it takes about 2 weeks to do the growth, sampling and analysis, but that would be just 1 of the 3 times I’d need to repeat for scientific rigour, so up to 2 months for an entire experiment. Quite depressing really just to get one graph.
I do slice electrophysiology but after animals have done a behavioral task. Recording from one animal takes one day, but doing an entire cohort takes months-years.
As a cellular microbiologist working with an obligate intracellular, experimental set-up can typically take a week, sometimes data collection can be done in this same week.-Analyzing said data or running secondary data collection with anlysis, typically runs experiments into 2 week investments of time….