by Emily Pentil, Year 11, Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School, Buckinghamshire. In 1957, one second was defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels of the caesium atom. Physics so esoteric seems unlikely to feature in an essay about the science of everyday life. But the idea of…
by Diyaco Shwany, Year 11, King Ecgbert School, Sheffield. Many people around the world do not know the significance, impacts and importance of science in everyday life. Almost every product we use in our life is developed through the knowledge of scientific discovery that even includes some of the foods we eat. Let’s take a…
by Amrutha Vudathu, Year 11, Michaela Community School, Brent. As the lights dimmed, soft mutters around me began to disappear. Dancers dressed in vivid colours rushed onto the brightly lit stage, smiling cheerily. Heads in the audience turned to face away from their conversations to see the stage, when suddenly- ‘Right arm, throw yourself into…
by Haeun Kim, Year 10, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Surrey. After falling over and grazing your knee in Netball practice at school, you then burn your finger whilst cooking in Food Tech. Then the top of your nose starts to peel off in the intense glaring of the sun in the hot summer’s day….
Atreyi Chakrabarty (St. Cross College, DPhil in Interdisciplinary Bioscience) in conversation with Professor Dorothy Bishop (Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford) More and more scientists are starting to doubt the nature of their own playing field. Their colleagues’ studies published in acclaimed journals, but the key findings mysteriously never seem to materialise when others try to…
By Dr Alice Thorneywork Be it ice in a drink, chocolate left in the sun, or the wax of a lit candle, melting – the phase transition in which a substance turns from a solid to a liquid – is a scientific phenomenon that we experience every day. While on a macroscopic level we know what melting looks…
Scientists from Oxford’s Healzlewood group discuss chemistry close to absolute zero. In the Heazlewood group we are interested in how chemical reactions progress at very low temperatures, close to absolute zero. The study of these reactions is of great importance for the exploration of naturally cold environments, such as the interstellar medium in space or the upper levels of Earth’s atmosphere. Previous research shows that…
Dr Martine Abboud is a multi-award winning scientist, working in the Schofield group in the Department of Chemistry and as a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College. Martine writes to ‘The Oxford Scientist’ about what she does and her passion for research. During my time in Oxford, I have discovered a genuine interest for scientific…
By Amity Roberts Photograph: Nasa Archive/Alamy Nancy Roman, a boundary-breaking astronomer known as the ‘Mother of the Hubble’, died aged 93 on December 25th, 2018. Roman was NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy and supervised the planning and development of the Hubble Space Telescope that would change the way we see the universe. Roman was born…
By Abigail Pavey The power to create, destroy or modify life has always been a source of great debate between scientists and among society as a whole. But what happens when scientists decide to go undercover and do what they please? In November 2018, Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced to the world that he had…
