Sounds like a good use of "spare" time to me and not that different from many a lab I've been part of: someone gets a hunch, sets up an experiment to follow it,

Sounds like a good use of "spare" time to me and not that different from many a lab I've been part of: someone gets a hunch, sets up an experiment to follow it, proves poor disproves whatever they were after, pulls down the experiment, rinse, repeat.