Question: So on a typical day, on average how many hours would you be working?

John Short answered on 12 Jun 2012:

This depends on the nature of the project, the experiment you are doing and how motivated you are. In my building, the labs are open 24/7 for PhD students, so in theory you could work all day and night, although i would normally fall asleep at that point! I have has to do an overnight time course, where every two hours I take a sample during my experiment. Thankfully those days and nights are rare! Normally I work from 9.30 to 6.30 during the week, with a couple of hours during the weekend.