• Question: what are you ultimately trying to find out?

    Asked by wisely to Andy, Alice JB, Barbara, James, Jo on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by hindmarsh.
    • Photo: Andy Norton

      Andy Norton answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I am ultimately trying to find out the mechanisms of how ceramics break, whether we can detect the breaking of them before they fail, and trying to understand how different things (like adding different things to the ceramic) affect how it breaks.

      People in the military are making ceramic plates to go on the outside of tanks. So that they can make these as strong and as hard as possible (hard enough to stop bullets from both hand-held guns and maybe even from tanks), people needed to investigate how and why ceramics break when they are hit or when they are compressed. If we can work out how they break when smashed (either with a bullet, or in a compressing machine like I use), then maybe we can work out how to make them better.

      So I am ultimately trying to find out how these ceramics break up when they are hit with things, and so we can work out ways to make them stronger, tougher, harder etc., and so we can get better armour for people and for tanks. So even though I am doing a very small aspect of a very big topic, my results should hopefully help get better equipment for soldiers, which is pretty cool.

    • Photo: Barbara Guinn

      Barbara Guinn answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Whether the protein we found can be used to kill tumour cells. We will inject people with it when their cancer is under control and when they feel a bit better and hopefully their body (T cells) will then kill any remaining cancer cells.

    • Photo: Alice Jones Bartoli

      Alice Jones Bartoli answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      My ultimate aim is to find out more about the different reasons why children develop behavioural problems, and use that information to develop a range of interventions that can be used by teachers and parents to work with children and help them to improve their behaviour.

      I don’t think that I can stop bad behaviour, I don’t think that I’ll be able to stop all children from growing up into criminals, but I do want the work that we do to help children and their families.

      I also really want people to think more carefully about problem behaviour in children. People are sometimes quick to judge bad behaviour as being a result of bad parents or just ‘naughty children’, I don’t think that this is really fair. I want to find out the best ways of helping children to improve their behaviour, and to help their parents and teachers to understand them.

    • Photo: Jo Hulsmans

      Jo Hulsmans answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I am trying to find out how (or if) the plant and the bacteria I am studying communicate. I am pretty sure there is some interaction, but I want to know if the plant sees the bacteria as a friend, an enemy or something it doesn’t care about.

    • Photo: James Jennings

      James Jennings answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I hope to find out how widely I can use my method to make new types of plastic material, and what these new materials can be used for.

      The plastics (polymers) I make are held within tiny spheres about 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. When two polymers are joined together they can form patterns- see my profile for an example of the sort of patterns I’m talking about. The regular patterns at this small scale are expected to have properties not found in most plastics.

      We think that these spheres may be able to toughen material if they are made of hard and soft parts (though maybe not tough enough for tank armour!). Also, as the layers in the spheres are the same length as some wavelengths of light, they may interact with light in a special way. Finding a use for the polymers may be a long way off, but most good science takes time!

Comments