In case you wonder what real research is like, here is my experience from decades of doing it. First, you write the proposal to X agency, where you promise to solve an amazingly difficult science problem. You win the grant, so you hire students and start. But things go wrong.../1
2/ The experiment doesn't produce results. So you change it and try again. It still doesn't produce results. Then you redesign the hardware, which sets you back a month. This repeats, so you buy new hardware and redesign again. You are using up valuable time...
3/ Then your student runs away with his or her significant other to Romania, so you have to hire a new student and retrain them. Then the safety guy notices you are using powdery simulated lunar soil. The safety guy has heard about exploding powders and tells you to stop work.
4/ You try to explain to the safety guy that mineral dust can't explode, because exploding is a chemical reaction called "oxidation", and minerals are already fully oxidized. But the safety guy isn't answering emails for about a week. You keep trying.
5/ Finally you get the safety guy's approval to start experiments again, but now it is the holidays and all the students are gone. Weeks later they return, but nobody is focused so everybody has excuses for a couple of weeks. Finally you get the experiments going again.
6/ You are running out of time! But at last you are getting some results. Sadly, they don't look very good. You make tweaks to the experiment but you don't have time to redesign it again. You tell the students to make a last push for lots of data. The data is a mess.
7/ You resort to self talk to pump yourself up so you won't give up. You tell yourself, "I can do this. This is why they pay me the big buck...Err, this is why they pay me the medium bucks." You stare at the data.
8/ You need to come up with some way to extract value from the data so you can declare victory. You have to report to Agency X that you spent the money well, but you are afraid the experiments weren't good enough. How can you spin this? (Maybe another cup of coffee will help.)
9/ With 3 days before the final report is due, you have a breakthrough. Suddenly you see the data a new way. YES! This **IS** why they pay you the medium bucks. The data is better than you thought. You can weave a story from this that you are proud of. The miracle has occurred!
10/ You write the final report on the last two days. It's actually pretty good. No, it's great! Then you stay up all night and write the proposal for the Phase 2 project so you can do it all over again. Because, who needs sleep when you can do research instead?!
11/11 This was based 100% on actual events. YMMV.
