Meet the scientists!

We understand what everything we see is made from:  Molecules and atoms that are themselves made of electrons orbiting around nuclei.  The nuclei are made of protons and neutrons, but predicting the properties of these nuclei is quite difficult.  The difficulty comes because we are not quite certain about the ways protons and neutrons interact with each other, and also because nuclei are just the wrong size:  They are neither so big that we can ignore the behaviour of individual protons and neutrons nor so small that we can easily solve the relevant equations.  

I create models of the force between protons and neutrons, use these models to simulate things like nuclear fusion, and see how well my simulations compare with what happens when you really take two nuclei in the lab and fire them at each other.  If my calculations agree with experiment I am happy, because I have understood something about the fundamental forces of nature.  If they don’t agree, then I analyse why not and try to improve my model.

Understanding nuclear physics is important for lots of reasons.  All elements heavier than Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium were created in stars.  When the stars died, the heavier elements were spread across the universe to form other stars and solar systems, including ours.  Most of the material that makes up or bodies has been inside a star in the past, and even gone through a supernova.  By looking at the distribution of matter today and understanding the nuclear reactions, we can get a kind of forensic history of the whole universe.  We can do things like this on a more recent scale by looking, for example, at different nuclear isotopes of Oxygen contained in the ice on Greenland.  By analysing these, we can work out the temperature of the Earth back thousands of years, and learn a lot more about climate change.

Though my primary interest is just to understand the way nature works better, and I think that seeking knowledge is an important part of what makes us human, it is important to remember that advances in technology that make the world a better place only come about because people do this kind of basic science.  Without people working in nuclear physics because they were just curious about the nature of the universe, we would not have radiotherapy for cancer treatment, we would not have television, or the world wide web.  I am a scientist, working on understanding things, not a technologist, taking science and turning it into useful devices.  I can be pretty sure that good use will come out of what I do, though.

For more info, see my blog about nuclear physics.

The picture below shows a still from a movie of two nuclei colliding.  The nuclei are isotopes of oxygen and carbon.  Click here (not on the picture) for the full movie.

There really is no typical day.  That’s one of the fun things about my job, but some of the things I typically do are: To catch up on the latest research in nuclear physics by looking at what has been published by other people working in my field.  I talk most days with the PhD students (students who already have one degree and are now working on a research degree) and researchers who work with me so that we can plan what we are going to do calculations to work out.  One thing I am trying to work out with one of my students at the moment is how we can make new chemical elements by colliding heavy nuclei together.  We are working out how to use a cluster of computers to make the calculation go faster.

Having done calculations, I spend some of my time writing it up to send for publication, so that other scientists can find out about it, and also going to present my work at conferences around the world.  The last one I went to was in Bulgaria, and the next one, hopefully, will be in San Fransisco (so I get to travel quite a lot!)

Like all university lecturers, though, my job is not just about researching, but also about teaching the next generation of scientists all the things they need to know to become science researchers, so I spend quite a lot of time preparing lessons and lectures and then giving them, and working with undergraduates on projects (actually the “new elements” calculation project is with a student).  Aside from that I look after the admissions process to the university for physics students, so I look at a lot of the application forms and decide who to invite for interview, and I spend quite a bit of time going to schools to talk about what it’s like to be a scientist and about nuclear physics.

I enjoy going out to schools to talk about some of the interesting, and perhaps surprising, aspects of nuclear physics.  Everyone knows about nuclear power and nuclear weapons, but nuclear physics is used in a lot of medical applications, both in diagnosis and treatment, in climate change studies, in manufacturing, in safety equipment, in space propulsion systems, in understanding the stars, geology, biology, and really just about anywhere.   I’d use the money to buy example pieces of equipment in all these areas, so that I could demonstrate better with real life examples just how useful nuclear physics really is.  Then, when I go to schools and other places to give talks, I would be in a better position to answer the questions like “yes, but what is it useful for?”