Question: hey why are you doing this project :) x write back please

Paul Stevenson answered on 17 Mar 2010:

Do you mean taking part in this competition? or working in nuclear physics? I’ll answer both:

I’m taking part in the competition because I like to (try to) explain my research to other people. I think it’s important to do that for all sorts of reasons. One is that my work is mostly funded by the public, so I think it’s only right that they should know what I’m doing. I also think it’s interesting, and would like to share that with others. I also go to schools quite a bit to talk about it. I always ask if anyone has questions, but often there are not many, and I never am quite sure if anything I say is making sense to anyone. This gives me a perfect chance to find out if what I’m saying is understandable.

As for why I do the research I do: I always liked physics at school, and even before, partly because I’ve always been fascinated with outer space. When I was studying it in University I really got to like quantum mechanics, which is a really weird theory, but one that seems to be correct. It’s weird because it says things like particles can be in two places at once, which is totally against common sense, but is actually how things behave at a very microscopic level. Nuclear physics is one area of quantum mechanics that I particularly enjoyed at University, so I decided to specialise in that