scientist 50: the chemical engineer – Mark Haw fluid and process engineering (2013)

Hear about measuring the properties of materials that are not just solids or liquids or gases but are all three in one. The soil under your feet is one such material – it is of course a solid with air and water mixed in. Knowing how soil behaves is especially helpful when you intend to build on it! And how soil behaves is even more interesting when you’re trying to build on land that might be hit by an earthquake. Dr Mark Haw tells how important the physical properties of materials are. He lectures at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow about “Multi-phase systems” and “Flow response of suspensions and granular media’, so you might not connect that with anything you ever learned. But he’ll be explaining that his branch of engineering, like many areas of research today, turns out to be a mix of disciplines. Dr Haw was in town to give a talk on what ‘life’ consists of, at the Cambridge Science Festival. In this interview you’ll hear him mention the fictional Dr Frankenstein, asking how we might turn a body made of sewed together parts, into a living thing.

28/06/2014 Tagged Cambridge, Chris Creese, engineering, physics, Roger Frost, science, process engineering

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