Never Lick the Spoon

Sep 10 2024 30 ep. 16 mins 10

Never Lick the Spoon Podcast artwork

We interview researchers and students at Imperial College London’s Institute of Molecular Science and Engineering. What are they working on and why is molecular science and engineering so important to today’s world?

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Episode 30. Sculpting with 3D printing

Sep 10 2024 31 mins

If you had access to a 3D printer, what would you print? Something fun, something useful? How about both? Alex Christopherson, a final year undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London and David Samuel, an artist based in Park Royal Design Studios, collaborated to create a 3D printed sculpture that doubles as a microscope and allows you to see a 3D pri

Episode 29 - Happy Women in Engineering Day from IMSE

Jun 24 2024 18 mins

Women in Engineering day is celebrated on the 23rd of June. To commemorate this special date, we talked to two women in engineering working and studying with the Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering (IMSE). Our guests for this episode are electrochemist and co-director of the Molecular Engineering masters, Dr. Anna Hankin, and masters' student and representative of her c

Episode 28 - Fine art and floppy discs

Mar 19 2024 15 mins

What sorts of science and engineering challenges do museums have in looking after their collections? In this episode I explore how Imperial’s research into data science, polymers and lasers is being used to understand and preserve historical and archaeological objects. In this episode my guests refer to two chests in the collections of the Victoria & Albert museum. The first

Episode 27 - Robots built my battery

Oct 16 2023 14 mins

A team at Imperial are building a robotic laboratory called DIGIBAT. This will automate research into materials for energy storage and energy generation. Robots won't just discover new materials. They'll also do the laborious work of testing all the many combinations of those materials to find out which make the best batteries and fuel cells.

Episode 26 - The ingredients list

Jul 05 2023 15 mins

What do fertilizer, body lotion, paracetamol tablets and mayonnaise have in common? Well, they’re all engineered mixtures, and they all have a long list of unpronounceable chemicals on the back of the packet. How can adjusting these chemicals affect the climate impact of the product? We dive deep into formulations.

Episode 25 - In plane sight

May 25 2023 14 mins

What are the sustainable alternatives to kerosene to power aircraft into a net zero world? And what would it take to scale their production up to meet demand? I talk to two authors of the recent IMSE briefing paper on low carbon fuels for aviation. We talk energy, technology readiness levels and the need for multidisciplinarity. Read the IMSE briefing paper about low carbon fuels f

Episode 24 - Desirably defective

Mar 17 2023 17 mins

Silicon-based solar panels are four times as efficient as plants at harvesting energy from sunlight. But they're expensive to produce because the material they're made of has to be very precisely engineered. What if we could make solar panels out of copper oxides, where the imperfections in the material are what makes them effective? I talk to two researchers who used a supercomput

Episode 23 - The Trojan Molecule

Jan 26 2023 15 mins

Molecules that change shape when light falls on them have many uses. Like the Trojan Horse, they can look benign, but transform into a weapon under the right circumstances. This week we explore how photoswitchable molecules could help tackle the next pandemic. The research we’re discussing is published here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacsau.2c00453

Episode 22 - Crystal healing

Nov 21 2022 15 mins

This month, we're focusing on a chemical process which is all around us: how crystals form. Humans have been using crystallisation to harvest salt from seawater for millennia. In the modern industrial world, it's used to make sugar, gemstones and silicon chips. So it’s a bit of a surprise to find a completely undiscovered phenomenon, of a crystal healing itself, happening in crys

Episode 21 - Soilless soil

Oct 20 2022 16 mins

One way of increasing food production is to develop substitutes for soil which can be used to grow plants. Why is 3D printing a good way of doing this? And how could it be used make new non-Earth type soils for farming in space?