Question: How do you use mathmatics in your work, I'm curious?

Darren Braddick answered on 15 Jun 2011:

Hi Anina11

Well, its a hard question. Think of a computer game – it isn’t real and yet you can perform actions which are somewhat realistic. The process of mimicking the real in this way is called simulation, or modeling. When people build big buildings and ships and stuff, they have to design small-scale models (like miniatures) or do engineering maths on computers to make sure everything fits, and is stable or reliable.

In the same way, I am taking a natural thing – the reaction of some enzymes with various compounds to make a different product. If I can write some mathematical equations that summarise the process, I can use some complicated maths (called ordinary differential equations) and can use some programming languages to mimic this reaction. To check if you are right, you can do the reaction in a lab and analyse the data – and then ‘fit’ or overlay it with your model. The benefit of the modeling is that you can study changes in the reaction which you may not be able to measure in the lab – for example very very very early interactions of molecules. On top of this, you can make predictions and test them – so it helps design the next generation of experiments.

I hope that answers your question – let me know if I can help anymore 🙂

Daz