New: The IOP’s 2012 Physics in Perspective enrichment event

Six leading lights will be giving talks in their fields of expertise as part of the Institute’s 2012 Physics in Perspective enrichment event. This annual three-day lecture series for physics students aged 16 to 19-years-old will be held in London from 12 to 14 February 2012. We asked Dr Yvette Hancock, one of the speakers for the 2012 programme, to explain why she is keen to take part:

“These talks are an excellent initiative from the Institute.  At school physics can be a lot of book-study and learning and students may sometimes lose sight of where their studies could possibly lead them or how these are connected to things beyond the classroom. One of the most exciting things about being a physicist is the research and finding out answers to questions that are not in the back of the book.

I love engaging with an audience by making my talks interactive, informal and as much fun as possible. Lectures should definitely be two-way conversations; I am really looking forward to knowing what sort of questions the students might have and to meet them after my talk.

My lecture will be focusing on nanotechnology and how this can be engineered on scales that are smaller than the width of a human hair. This is an incredible achievement when you think about it. The quantum world is run on probabilities, which together will the very small size of these systems, makes them extremely challenging to engineer. The best thing about quantum effects and small system sizes is that totally new properties can emerge. This is really exciting as useful discoveries can be made – the only limitations on these discoveries being our creativity, ingenuity and imagination – giving us what I call ‘quantum magic tricks’.

I like to think that I have the quantum version of ‘magic’ in my research. My current area of interest is in the wonder-material graphene, the world’s thinnest material: a single atom-thick piece of carbon chicken-wire. Now think about this material being used to make a mobile phone that wraps around your wrist like a small wrist-watch and runs on solar cells, senses its environment and is more powerful that the fastest computers that we have to date. Now imagine researching it as your day job.”

Further information and to book onto the 2012 Physics in Perspective enrichment course.