I am a biochemist, a vocation that (you may note from the title) has little to do with physics. I mean, granted, everything is based on some form of physics, but I mean that if you have a complex physics equation to solve, you aren’t going to be calling the biochemist. Not unless the answer you’re looking for is, “Have you tried a different pH?”. Which is strange because I’m a biochemist who currently works in a physics engineering group.
Initially, I thought this was because there had been a mistake in HR, and eventually, someone would come around and frogmarch me back towards the life sciences. But no one came, and rather than rounding me up and releasing me into a department of other like-minded biology and chemistry types, the university closed what little life science was left elsewhere. Then, rather than fearing being forcibly repatriated, as the lone biochemist left, I was more afraid that the crack university downsizing teams would find this last bastion of biochemistry and excise me, too.
But that didn’t happen either. Instead, I’ve spent seven years here, and so far, all that’s happened is I’ve learnt a lot about physics, and my colleagues have discovered that if they call everything I do ‘squishy stuff’, my left eye twitches. It’s been a truly multidisciplinary heaven.
Being a biochemist and working closely with physics and engineering has given me a unique outside perspective on physicists, which I think is worth sharing. Jane Goodall did that excellent documentary on gorillas, and basically, this is the same, but with more lasers and fewer leaves. The amount of poop being thrown is about the same…
I think where Jane Goodall had it easy, though, was that gorillas and Jane are clearly different. I mean, I guess you could broadly find some similarities: two eyes, four limbs, hair that I’m weirdly jealous of, basic stuff we can all agree on.
Physicists and biochemists are tougher. Sure, some have hair I’m jealous of, but quite a lot have no hair and are probably jealous of me. So, in order to get this documentary idea off the ground, I’m going to have to try much harder to filter out the core differences.
Take, for example, the respective appreciation of risk. Being a biochemist, my knowledge of electronics and lasers is frankly shameful (although it’s slightly better after 7 years, I’m no physicist). And my colleagues have the kind of knowledge of chemical hazards that I’d expect from people who stopped learning about chemistry when they were 15. The result of this is that I have what I view as a very healthy respect for lasers, wear all the PPE, and try to spend as little time as possible anywhere near them. Likewise, my colleagues treat my chemical labs much like one would treat an unexploded landmine that you’d just seen a teenager give a swift kick to.
This seems true despite my explaining very carefully that the big bottle labelled Saline Solution is about as scary as an enthusiastic hug, and the brightly coloured stuff is not some new deadly toxin, but food dye I was using to visualise something. Similarly, despite showing me straightforward math that most of the lasers in the optics labs would probably burn out their flash lamps before they did me any actual damage, I still insist on wearing two pairs of safety glasses and an all-body laser shield.
Problem-solving is even more of a gulf as my colleagues typically solve problems through careful design and modelling, while I apparently solve problems with “glowing chemicals”. I mean, they’re not wrong most of the time, but I’d like to think that I at least sometimes solve problems with explosive glowing stuff or smelly glowing stuff – there are options!
Once, I asked a colleague for help on a project, and I think it’s fair to say there was a level of shocked horror in their eyes when they realised that my plan consisted of “I reckon this might be the best concentration…”. This is also the same colleague who once explained that they’d been working on the settings and conditions for their experimental rig for months! I mean, I can’t fault the fact that they did just turn it on, and it all worked. That’s witchcraft, not science!
I have a theory that the level of planning required is more about the need for my physics colleagues to spend months trying to find all the kit they need out of the billion tiny wires and small screws that are liberally distributed into every drawer and shelf. The optics labs look like someone took a stack of hardware catalogues from the late 90s and fed them into a shredder pointed at the doorway to the lab, showering it with pictures of tiny out-of-date components.
My chemical lab, by contrast, is a model of carefully segregated chemicals neatly catalogued and organised, with a special ‘just for glassware’ cupboard and another for heaters and sonicators. Every surface is clean and clear of mess, with just the occasional couple of nice clean bits of glassware drying on the side of the sink. This description has nothing at all to do with the fact that my colleagues never come into my chemistry lab for fear of being dissolved or poisoned, and it is entirely true and accurate…
Working in a physics lab is a challenging experience for a biochemist. I live in constant fear that at any time, one of my colleagues is going to demand that I explain Maxwell’s equations or be deported (I think they are about the correct amount of instant coffee to use, right?). But I think the biggest challenge of working in a physics lab is that I’ve ended up working with a diverse range of people who are all interested and excited about all kinds of science aimed at solving the problem in ways that neither of us would have ever considered on our own. It’s exhausting. I think I’d rather go live with the gorillas in the mist.
