• Question: What is your newest invention ?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Jemma on 26 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      The newest thing I’ve made is a bit of equipment that I can use for filtering using a new type of filter. If you’d like to see pictures of it there are some on my profile.

      As scientists we usually discover things rather than invent then but sometimes we need to invent things which help us to discover new things.

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      Hi Stefan!

      Well currently my newest invention is a great recipe for chocolate brownies. Cooking is basically just chemistry that’s safe to eat 🙂

      Science-wise I’ve not really invented anything yet, but I’ve made a discovery. My materials contain lots of tiny holes which are so small you can’t see them under a microscope (you could fit 10,000 in the width of one strand of hair!). If me or other scientists want to measure how big some of these tiny holes are we have to use a clever bit of maths.

      The problem with this clever bit of maths though is that it makes a couple of educated guesses about what my material looks like. By using lots of different ways to measure these holes I’ve shown that these guesses are very wrong.

      This may not seem that important, but in my field of science everyone uses these guesses to measure their materials. If everyone uses the wrong thing it has a big impact on whether any of us can trust our data or not. So my discovery shows other scientists that they have to be very careful measuring their data, and I’ve recommended a couple of things they can do to check their results are trustworthy.

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