Alex's experience on 18 November 2009

My day at Building 18 visiting the Soft Materials Group was an interesting one.

I first met some of the people Marc was working with. Some I had already met as I had spent two days in the Innovation Campus listening to what people there have been doing.

The first person I had met was Luke. Luke taught me about Bucky paper and why he is researching it. After a short lesson, Luke then showed me how he created the Bucky paper. At first we went to collect the Carbon Nano Tubes so Luke could show me the filtration process.

Next I listened to what Ahmed was working on. His work seemed much similar to Luke’s work but it still had its differences. With Ahmed I looked at the different densities of Carbon Nano Tubes under a Macroscope.

After Ahmed, I worked with Ali on different work. With Ali, I created a gel rabbit.
To create this rabbit, we mixed some naturally occurring gum in the best way I had ever seen. The gel seemed to stir itself as the magnet spun around in the substance.

Unfortunately, after my work with Ali and my amazing day, I had to leave the lab and go home. I had an amazing time at Building 18 and I am looking forward to coming back again.

Thank you

It's nearly the end of my 2 days in Chemistry so I really want to thank everyone who organised it and showed me around, and everyone who I spoke to. I had a great time and have learnt heaps about Chemistry and Uni, and that there's so much more to do than what I thought.

Thanks heaps to Cameron and Marc and maybe I'll be back in a couple of years...

Phoebe

Gellan Gum Hydrogel

These are my gellan gum hydrogels that I made with Cameron. Watch the video of us making them below...

We set it on a record so that the cells could grow in lines along the grooves in the same way that cells are aligned in muscles. Under a microscope the grooves are more obvious and we could measure things like how wide and long they are.

I think it's great how tissue can be made, especially from products that the body will accept. Just these 2 days have shown me that there is so much to learn and create, and then even more once we have done that.

Phoebe.

What is an eye made of?

The second photo is of a tiny slice of eye that gets put onto the tray in the photo above it. Then one of the two nozzles sprays it and the other sniffs like a nose so that the information can be processed inside. The machine can then show exactly what the eye is made of.

Phoebe.

Bucky paper

So, this is how Luke makes his bucky paper (i think that's how you spell it). It's basically heaps of carbon nanotubes that are filtered out of a solution and dried to make something like paper. I got to see pictures of the paper under a microscope and all the little holes in it that could maybe be used to purify things like water.

It feels like i'm in a different world with words like nano and bio being used when I only know them from movies about robots and crazy science things that will never happen. Turns out they are happening.

After speaking to Ali i have finally realised that 'research' isn't all about "Hmm.. I wonder what happens if i do this..." because there are all the results that need to be looked at and figured out. I can only image how great it would feel to know about something that only a handful of others know because of what you have done to work it out and I'm really looking forward to that feeling.

Keep watching twitter!

Phoebe.

Welcome!

Hello! Welcome to the Soft Materials Group at the Univeristy of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.