15 Minutes Smarter

START OF TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Claire Concannon
Welcome to another episode of 15 Minutes Smarter. I'm Dr Claire Concannon, and I'm here again with Dr Jonathan
Falconer.
[00:00:08] Jono Falconer
That's me!
[00:00:11] Claire Concannon
(Laughs). And today we're going to talk about energy.
[00:00:14] Jono Falconer
Yeah, because energy is everything in the world, and what's more important than everything?
[00:00:22] Claire Concannon
Ah...nothing? That sounds like a trick question.
[00:00:25] Jono Falconer
I think nothing is less important than everything.
[00:00:27] Claire Concannon
(Laughs).
[00:00:28] Jono Falconer
This is a philosophical discussion, not a scientific one.
[00:00:32] Claire Concannon
Yeah. So there's lots of different kinds of energy.
[00:00:35] Jono Falconer
Yeah, ah there is potential energy, which is mass like a table or you are potential energy.
[00:00:43] Claire Concannon
Snack bars?
[00:00:43] Jono Falconer
That's it, snack bars. Yeah. Food. Like Einstein's equation E equals MC squared converts matter into energy.
[00:00:50] Claire Concannon
Such a great equation.
[00:00:51] Jono Falconer
One of my top five favourites.
[00:00:54] Claire Concannon
Oooh! It's in the top five?
[00:00:56] Jono Falconer
Yeah.
[00:00:56] Claire Concannon
What else is in the top five?
[00:00:59] Jono Falconer
Um, E to the I pi plus one equals zero.
[00:01:04] Claire Concannon
A classic.(Laughs).
[00:01:06] Jono Falconer
Classic equation right there. I is an imaginary number which is called the square root of negative one. I believe in
imaginary numbers.
[00:01:14] Claire Concannon
(Laughs).
[00:01:14] Jono Falconer
I'm not an imaginary number denialist, I had an imaginary friend growing up. So the numbers, they just kind of slide
right in there, very easy for me to understand.
[00:01:22] Claire Concannon
Nice. OK, what else is in the top five?
[00:01:26] Jono Falconer
Time equals money.
[00:01:27] Claire Concannon
Oh that's a good one.
[00:01:28] Jono Falconer
I like that one. Yeah.
[00:01:29] Claire Concannon
OK, anyway, we're getting off topic. Energy.
[00:01:33] Jono Falconer
Yup.
[00:01:34] Claire Concannon
And we're actually going to focus on alternative energy and how materials science can help us because our
traditional forms of energy.
[00:01:44] Jono Falconer
Burning stuff. Lighting stuff on fire.
[00:01:46] Claire Concannon
That's exactly what it is.
[00:01:48] Jono Falconer
Cool.
[00:01:49] Claire Concannon
Burning coal, oil, gas, actually not really working out for us anymore.
[00:01:54] Jono Falconer
Now, I mean, it is cool to burn stuff, but not as cool as using energy sources that don't increase the temperature of
the planet.
[00:02:02] Claire Concannon
Yeah, yeah. Nice to have a livable planet. So renewable energy sources like hydro power, wind power, solar power,
these are your your alternative energy sources.
[00:02:18] Jono Falconer
I mean, fossil fuels are renewable, too. Like if you're patient and you can just chill out for a hundred or so million
years.
[00:02:29] Claire Concannon
Oh yeah, ok.
[00:02:31] Jono Falconer
We'll get more fossil fuels.
[00:02:33] Claire Concannon
Everybody just sit down (laughs).
[00:02:35] Jono Falconer
Not move, not drive or eat food even because that requires a lot of energy.
[00:02:41] Claire Concannon
Yeah. OK, um so. Well yeah, and I suppose if coal and oil can be classed as renewable then how renewable is
something like solar power?
[00:02:54] Jono Falconer
As renewable as I guess it only lasts as long as the sun exists.
[00:02:58] Claire Concannon
I mean there's going to be trouble in about five billion years.
[00:03:01] Jono Falconer
Yeah?
[00:03:02] Claire Concannon
(Laughs). It's a very different picture when you think on really long time scales.
[00:03:09] Claire Concannon
But um we did some research.
[00:03:12] Jono Falconer
Yes.
[00:03:13] Claire Concannon
Like we read some scientific papers. We were looking up what the relative damage to human health and the planet
might be of using these different energy sources. Right.
[00:03:23] Jono Falconer
Which is kind of hard to quantify. But we found a paper that tried to quantify it using the coolest unit I've ever come
across, which is the species year per kilowatt hour.
[00:03:37] Claire Concannon
Yeah, you you're a big fan of this unit.
[00:03:40] Jono Falconer
Yeah. And if you're confused by what that means, ah you should be.
[00:03:45] Claire Concannon
Yeah. Um it's going to take its 15 minutes... (Laughs).
[00:03:49] Jono Falconer
(Laughs). But yeah, the species year per kilowatt hour, basically tells you how many species we would make go
extinct for how much energy we use in a year.
[00:04:04] Claire Concannon
Yeah, so kilowatt hour is a unit of energy.
[00:04:07] Jono Falconer
It's like your power bill.
[00:04:08] Claire Concannon
Yeah.
[00:04:09] Jono Falconer
Is in kilowatt hours.
[00:04:10] Claire Concannon
And then the species per year is a potential species loss over a year, like three hundred and sixty five days of using
that amount of energy. And so this paper did this calculation um based on using traditional energy sources like coal
and oil, gas versus solar power or wind energy. And guess what?
[00:04:38] Jono Falconer
If I used I mean, I think it's not that bad. If I used energy like an average American and I got my energy from coal, I
would only be responsible for removing point zero zero zero zero three species each year, which isn't that many.
That means I could live 30 thousand years before I make a single species go extinct.
[00:05:01] Claire Concannon
But Jono, multiply that by seven billion for me.
[00:05:08] Jono Falconer
Ah then we get two hundred and thirty seven thousand species dying each year. So that's less good.
[00:05:17] Claire Concannon
Definitely less good. But that that is if you were creating all that energy using traditional sources because
renewable energy sources have a lot less impact.
[00:05:29] Jono Falconer
Yeah. And there was a difference between some of the renewable energy sources, like solar and wind had the
lowest, but they were all way better than coal.
[00:05:41] Claire Concannon
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I guess solar is one of the ones that just has massive potential.
[00:05:50] Jono Falconer
Energy.
[00:05:54] Claire Concannon
Like, it's only just kind of starting here in New Zealand. It's kind of it's still in the 'Other' category when you report
on the renewable energy contribution. But the amount of energy that hits the earth from the sun every minute is
just crazy. And it's just a matter of if we can take that energy and convert it into electricity.
[00:06:16] Jono Falconer
Yeah, and it's getting way better. Like solar is improving the most. I think of any renewable energy source like solar
power has gotten eight times cheaper over the past 10 years. Which is huge.
[00:06:29] Claire Concannon
Yeah, so like, I didn't really understand how it worked. But learning is fun (laughs) cause this is the photoelectric
effect.
[00:06:41] Jono Falconer
Right.
[00:06:41] Claire Concannon
Which is pretty neat.
[00:06:42] Jono Falconer
Yeah, it brings in Einstein's E equals MC squared equation because we've got...
[00:06:48] Claire Concannon
One of your faves.
[00:06:50] Jono Falconer
One of my faves. Ah so we've got a light particle or photon which runs into an electron and it transfers its energy
into that electron. So.
[00:07:02] Claire Concannon
It sets it free!
[00:07:04] Jono Falconer
Yeah, it sets it free to run into other electrons, which creates electricity and it sets those electrons free to power
our stuff, which is what electrons like doing, lighting up our houses and running our computers.
[00:07:19] Claire Concannon
Sure. Yeah, they've got emotion and motivation and yeah. Subatomic particle.
[00:07:25] Jono Falconer
I care about those electrons.
[00:07:28] Claire Concannon
But yeah, I think that's, that's a really neat thing for me, is that you've got this system where they set up. So this
electron got free and then they have this little racetrack that the electron goes around in, so you're you're not
actually like the energy is being transferred from a electron to electron and that creates electricity. So you're never
actually losing electrons. So it can just keep going.
[00:07:51] Jono Falconer
Right. You don't need to, like, do anything to it once you build the solar panel.
[00:07:55] Claire Concannon
You don't need to feed it more electrons. Yeah. It just blows my mind.
[00:07:57] Jono Falconer
Yeah. I like the idea of feeding electrons (laughs).
[00:08:02] Claire Concannon
Well, honestly, like that's what I thought when we were looking into this. I was like "OK, and how do you, you know,
what do you have to put back into the solar power panel to keep going?".
[00:08:11] Jono Falconer
You know, you go yeah, you'd think, yeah. That the electrons would go somewhere and you'd have to get more.
But.
[00:08:16] Claire Concannon
No!
[00:08:17] Jono Falconer
You don't.
[00:08:17] Claire Concannon
No.
[00:08:17] Jono Falconer
Pretty cool.
[00:08:18] Claire Concannon
Yeah, but a person who actually does know this (laughs) is Justin, right. And you went out.
[00:08:27] Jono Falconer
Yes.
[00:08:27] Claire Concannon
Had a chat with Justin.
[00:08:28] Jono Falconer
Yeah, I went and caught up with Justin Hodgkiss, who is a professor of chemistry at VUW and Co-Director of the
MacDiarmid Institute. Welcome to the 15 Minutes Smarter Justin.
[00:08:41] Justin Hodgkiss
Hi Jono, good to be here.
[00:08:42] Jono Falconer
So what do you think are some of the biggest challenges are right now with solar energy? Is it the cost of the
materials or whether materials are sustainable? Is it the solar efficiency or storing solar energy since it can only
work during the day?
[00:09:00] Justin Hodgkiss
Ah yeah, it's probably a bit of all of those I mean, the bottom line is that um, you know, not every roof has solar
panels on it, and that's because not everybody can afford solar panels. Um you know, they work perfectly well.
They generate electricity whenever the sun's shining. But if there were a lot cheaper, then everybody could or you
know, more people could afford them. And and the cost does come down to the cost of manufacturing, the cost of
materials. And you're right that the inevitable challenge is that they only generate power when the sun's shining.
So that means that if we had them on every house and generating lots of electricity at some point, then we need to
store that electricity.
[00:09:40] Jono Falconer
Right.
[00:09:40] Justin Hodgkiss
And so it's coupled to things like batteries developing as well.
[00:09:44] Jono Falconer
Yeah. So with your research, how are you addressing some of these challenges?
[00:09:49] Justin Hodgkiss
So my research is on next generation photovoltaics that could replace silicon. So silicon photovoltaics are the
standard ones that you see on rooftops now, and silicon panels are rigid and heavy and that explains part of the
manufacturing costs because you kind of that kind of manufactured like panes of glass. Um they need to be really
pure otherwise they're inefficient. And so I'm working on ah materials that could be printed that are essentially
polymers and molecules that do the same job, that they take light and convert it to electricity. But you need hardly
any of them because they absorb light so strongly.
[00:10:32] Jono Falconer
Ok.
[00:10:32] Justin Hodgkiss
So they could be manufactured very sustainably. But you don't see them yet because they're not as efficient as
they need to be. Yeah, that's where the future's going.
[00:10:40] Jono Falconer
Alright. So if we were to have these solar panels in our hands, are they called solar panels or fabrics?
[00:10:50] Justin Hodgkiss
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it it, the form is not really like a panel. Yeah. Photovoltaic, I guess,
photovoltaic.
[00:10:59] Jono Falconer
Yeah, and so it would be would it be like a piece of saran wrap or a bedsheet? Like what? What would this feel like
if we had it in our hands?
[00:11:09] Justin Hodgkiss
It would probably feel like like an overhead projector transparency, which is another thing that many of your
listeners won't have any idea what I'm talking about. Um, but yeah, like a thin kind of plastic bag or a plastic folder
or something like that.
[00:11:26] Jono Falconer
Ok, nice. So it's something that I could wear to potentially power an electric skateboard?
[00:11:33] Justin Hodgkiss
Potentially you could, yes.
[00:11:35] Jono Falconer
And ah how far could I go if I was wearing this shirt on an electric skateboard? Do you have an idea?
[00:11:41] Justin Hodgkiss
Um so, what I can tell you is um how much power you would get. And then it depends on how heavy you are and
how.
[00:11:47] Jono Falconer
Alright.
[00:11:48] Justin Hodgkiss
Your battery and that kind of stuff. So I can do a quick calculation so that on a clear day, the sun's shining and it's
straight above you that delivers about 1000 watts per square meter.
[00:12:01] Jono Falconer
Ok.
[00:12:03] Justin Hodgkiss
Um, so let's say that the solar photovoltaic is about 10 percent efficient, hopefully a be more than that. But if
there's losses and transmission stuff, then you'd get 100 watts per square meter. So let's just make things simple.
[00:12:13] Jono Falconer
A square meter that's like that would be about a shirt if the sun was hitting all of it.
[00:12:17] Justin Hodgkiss
Yeah, maybe a cape.
[00:12:18] Jono Falconer
A cape. Nice.
[00:12:20] Justin Hodgkiss
So you've got a cape that's one square meter.
[00:12:21] Jono Falconer
That'd be more stylish.
[00:12:23] Justin Hodgkiss
(Laughs). Yeah so you'd get about 100 watts from that. Now a typical electric skateboard, I think is...I don't have
one, unfortunately, but I think they're around three hundred, five hundred watts.
[00:12:32] Jono Falconer
Ok.
[00:12:34] Justin Hodgkiss
So with 100 watts you could either go really slowly.
[00:12:37] Jono Falconer
OK.
[00:12:37] Justin Hodgkiss
Or um maybe put a small child on it to go faster or you could um you know, use that to use your cape to charge it
up.
[00:12:45] Jono Falconer
Right.
[00:12:46] Justin Hodgkiss
For 10 minutes and then you go for a bit of a hoon after that.
[00:12:49] Jono Falconer
Yeah, if you're wearing a cape you definitely want to be going fast enough for it to blow in the wind, right.
Otherwise it kind of.
[00:12:54] Justin Hodgkiss
(Laughs). Yeah, you do you'd need to.
[00:12:54] Jono Falconer
No one likes a cape just sagging down your back. (Laughs).
[00:13:00] Justin Hodgkiss
Just dangling there. Yeah. So you maybe want to just crouch down like a lizard in the sun for a while and then take
off.
[00:13:05] Jono Falconer
Sounds good. And if someone wanted to get involved in designing a an electric cape or any other type of solar
energy, what, what type of field should they go into? What is kind of the most important areas of research to learn
about this stuff?
[00:13:21] Justin Hodgkiss
Traditionally, if you were um making solar panels, silicon ones, you would be a physicist or an electrical engineer.
Ah but I'm I'm a chemist. And um so this area, you know, we're actually designing materials, designing molecules
that um that convert to electricity. So, you know either I think chemistry, physics, engineering would still be the
most important areas, materials science kind of spanning those things and um. But of course it's, you know there's
other things that become important as well. We're talking about new technologies where people's behavior
becomes important as to how they will actually use them or whether they will use them at all even if they work
perfectly.
[00:14:04] Jono Falconer
So even sociology can be important.
[00:14:07] Justin Hodgkiss
Sociology will be very important for adoption of new technologies.
[00:14:11] Jono Falconer
Great. Well, thanks a lot for your time. I think that was very informative and hopefully our listeners have a good feel
for the power of solar power. Thanks, Justin.
[00:14:23] Justin Hodgkiss
Thank you, cheers.
[00:14:24] Claire Concannon
Hey, that was a great interview. There's some really interesting stuff there.
[00:14:28] Jono Falconer
Thank you.
[00:14:28] Claire Concannon
I cannot believe that you ended up on skate cape again (laughs).
[00:14:33] Jono Falconer
I'm going to have one of those.
[00:14:34] Claire Concannon
If you can dream it, you could do it, Jono.
[00:14:36] Jono Falconer
Yeah. Anyway, time equals money.
[00:14:39] Claire Concannon
Yeah.
[00:14:40] Jono Falconer
Ah so we need to move on. But next time we are going to talk about nanotechnology and how size matters.
[00:14:49] Claire Concannon
Yay, cool. Looking forward to it. Where should people go in the meantime if they want to know more?
[00:14:54] Jono Falconer
W W W dot MacDiarmid dot A C dot N Z.
[00:15:01] Claire Concannon
Sweet!
[00:15:01] Jono Falconer
Bye.
END OF TRANSCRIPT

START OF TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Jono Falconer
Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in to the first episode of the 15 Minutes Smarter podcast, a podcast where you are going to learn about a lot of cool materials science stuff that's going to make you smarter.
[00:00:12] Claire Concannon
Yeah, I'm excited.
[00:00:13] Jono Falconer
Over a 15 minute time period.
[00:00:15] Claire Concannon
15 Minutes Smarter, makes no sense, but carry on.
[00:00:18] Jono Falconer
I'm Dr Jonathan Falconer. I have a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry and I'm a Teaching Fellow in Pharmacology at the University of Otago, and my co-host is Dr Clare Concannon.
[00:00:29] Claire Concannon
Yup. I have a PhD biochemistry and I work now in science communication in the Otago Museum.
[00:00:35] Jono Falconer
The 15 Minutes Smarter podcast is brought to you by the MacDiarmid Institute that does a lot of cool materials science research in New Zealand, and our first episode is going to cover what materials science is and where it came from.
[00:00:51] Claire Concannon
Yeah, and I guess there are many types of scientific knowledge today, like, if you think about it...Back in the day, way back, you know, there was probably just like SCIENCE, you know, this is all of this is all that we know about science.
[00:01:07] Jono Falconer
Yeah, well, if you are the first person, then all of what you know would be all of mankind's knowledge.
[00:01:15] Claire Concannon
Yeah, it would be great. You'd be like, "I know the entire breadth of mankind scientific knowledge... I learnt it yesterday". (Laughs).
[00:01:21] Jono Falconer
The red fruits taste good. That's all there is.
[00:01:26] Claire Concannon
Yeah.
[00:01:27] Jono Falconer
And then things got a little bit more complicated, you know, but still, I mean, like 2000 years ago in ancient Greece, they knew a decent amount of stuff. You could probably still become a doctor in like two months.
[00:01:39] Claire Concannon
(Laughs).
[00:01:39] Jono Falconer
Because that's just all there was to know about medicine.
[00:01:42] Claire Concannon
I mean, your lifespan is shorter, so maybe you just need to get that done.
[00:01:45] Jono Falconer
It's just all compressed together.
[00:01:46] Claire Concannon
The PhD has expanded as our lifespans have expanded.
[00:01:50] Jono Falconer
Right.
[00:01:50] Claire Concannon
But yeah, I guess early days it was kind of philosophy and it was mixed in with myth and religion. And then people started to make observations and do kind of logical experiments and engage in that process of science that we were talking about. And as they did that, we started to get the different branches of science. So about 16th century, we started to kind of see like the big three, you know: physics, chemistry, biology. And I suppose physics would have come from maths and astronomy and optics and mechanics and, you know, all united in geometry, and chemistry probably came from alchemy.
[00:02:33] Jono Falconer
Yeah, it did, people uh trying to make gold out of things that were not gold to get rich. And I don't believe it worked.
[00:02:42] Claire Concannon
I mean, it's a bold frontier, right? If you're going to try something, you'd be like, "Hey, I'm just going to go make some gold. It's going to be great." (Laughs). But yeah, I think um from that um trying to make matter turn into gold. There is a few people who started carefully recording their experiments and observations, and that became the science of chemistry. And then biology, I guess biology is one of those ones where, you know, from very early days, humans are studying the animals around them and starting to.
[00:03:16] Jono Falconer
Agriculture would be biology.
[00:03:18] Claire Concannon
Yeah. Engage in farming practices and things like that. Um so, yeah, we've got we've got those big three. But I mean, now obviously there's a huge range of different science knowledge topic and themes that we have.
[00:03:32] Jono Falconer
Yeah.
[00:03:32] Claire Concannon
You know, you can't just get go like "I know physics". (Laughs).
[00:03:37] Jono Falconer
Yeah. And I think some of those fields blend together because ah the lines between fields aren't super well defined. So the difference between physics and chemistry, I like to think of it as if we're talking about the physics of atoms. There are equations that can describe how atoms work, but those equations only work if your atom has one proton. So you can describe one element in the periodic table.
[00:04:08] Claire Concannon
Yeah, ok.
[00:04:08] Jono Falconer
So it's not that useful. So chemistry allows us to describe how all of the other elements work and how molecules work.
[00:04:16] Claire Concannon
Can you tell the Jono is a chemist? (Laughs). So much shade on physics, "it's not that useful."
[00:04:22] Jono Falconer
No, physics. Physics is very useful. I mean...
[00:04:29] Claire Concannon
(Laughs) I'm a biologist because that is in fact the most difficult of all of the scientific knowledge is to try and grasp.
[00:04:39] Jono Falconer
Because math is not very hard?
[00:04:43] Claire Concannon
(Laughs). Biological systems are complex, my friend. You know, you need to be prepared to dive in and not be able to control absolutely everything and still carefully design a really good experiment. That'll get your results.
[00:04:56] Jono Falconer
That's true. Similar to how physics couldn't describe large molecules. Chemistry also can't describe animals because animals are too complicated and there's just too many molecules in an animal to track how it works. But if we look at very, very small parts of animals, if you look at individual cells, we can actually include chemistry in
some of how cells work, and that's called biochemistry.
[00:05:22] Claire Concannon
Yep, biochemistry. Got my PhD in that.
[00:05:26] Jono Falconer
(Laughs).Nice. Name drop. So the field we're talking about today, material science sort of well, it's actually a field that blends science and engineering together.
[00:05:39] Claire Concannon
Mm hmm.
[00:05:40] Jono Falconer
And engineering is basically a way of using scientific knowledge to build stuff. So engineering is more practical to try and get stuff done.
[00:05:52] Claire Concannon
Yeah. And like material. We say materials science and the name materials science is kind of given to this branch in the 1940's and 50's when people were kind of trying to innovate for the war and then the Cold War. But materials science and actually also wars have been around for all time.
[00:06:14] Jono Falconer
Yeah.
[00:06:14] Claire Concannon
When you say there, like about the engineering aspect and the scientific aspect, everything is made of materials and people have been trying to problem solve materials from, you know, back all ages of civilization.
[00:06:29] Jono Falconer
Yeah, I think ah a lot of materials science, unfortunately, was explored to try and beat people in war. So ah like initially people fought with sticks and rocks and bone and then people discovered copper, that was a little bit harder, and tin. And then people figured out and actually this is, you know, somewhat complicated materials science, people blended copper and tin together to get bronze, and that was harder than anything anyone had before. And then people were able to purify iron and that was way stronger than bronze. And then the people who had iron stuff won all the battles.
[00:07:09] Claire Concannon
Yeah, well, and also, you know, the hunts and things like that. But like, you know, hence we get the names Bronze Age.
[00:07:16] Jono Falconer
Right.
[00:07:16] Claire Concannon
And Iron Age. Materials science was so cool even at that time. The people were naming actual tracks of years after it.
[00:07:25] Jono Falconer
Yeah, it's been around a long time and had a huge impact, but it's only recently that we've defined it.
[00:07:30] Claire Concannon
Yeah. You know, I love a good definition. Jono, what is a material?
[00:07:36] Jono Falconer
A material is everything, basically. It's matter. So gas, water or skin, a table. But materials science, we're usually talking about solid materials.
[00:07:51] Claire Concannon
Ok.
[00:07:51] Jono Falconer
So, like metals, wood, plastic, but also things that are complicated, like really small metal particles like nanoparticles or maybe a solar cell or like a rain jacket that stops you from getting wet. That would be materials science on how to make that fabric.
[00:08:10] Claire Concannon
Yeah, OK, so the science of everything. (Laughs). No wonder it's so cool. When you said nanoparticles there, what did you mean by that?
[00:08:20] Jono Falconer
A nanoparticle is a material that you can't see. It's about a thousand times smaller than what you could see than like a human hair. So they're super small and nanoparticles can have different material properties than large materials. So if you had a big piece of silver that you held in your hand, it won't really dissolve easily if you put it in water. But if you broke that silver up and made it into silver nanoparticles, those silver nanoparticles could actually just dissolve in water, so their properties can
be super different.
[00:09:00] Claire Concannon
Yeah.
[00:09:01] Jono Falconer
And it leads to a lot of cool applications.
[00:09:02] Claire Concannon
Because scientists can then use that in like different properties of these nanoparticles to make different materials made out of tiny, tiny pieces.
[00:09:12] Jono Falconer
Yeah, I used to make nanoparticles of these things called Metal Organic Frameworks with Carla Meledandri at the University of Otago, which are basically spongey materials that have little holes throughout them that can absorb gases. And we were trying to make them really, really small so that we could try and trap those gases faster than big material.
[00:09:34] Claire Concannon
How does that help? What do you mean trap gases?
[00:09:37] Jono Falconer
Um, we were trying to trap carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to try...
[00:09:40] Claire Concannon
That would help.
[00:09:42] Jono Falconer
Solve global warming.
[00:09:43] Claire Concannon
Yeah. Did you figure it out?
[00:09:45] Jono Falconer
It's ongoing.
[00:09:48] Claire Concannon
(Laughs). That's a tagline of most scientific research, isn't it?
[00:09:50] Jono Falconer
Yeah.
[00:09:53] Claire Concannon
I guess the one of the key things about materials science is about getting the right material for the job.
[00:10:00] Jono Falconer
Yeah.
[00:10:01] Claire Concannon
So, like, you know, if you're if you're using the silver nanoparticles, it's because they have this special property that you want to make use of.
[00:10:09] Jono Falconer
Right.
[00:10:10] Claire Concannon
And I think this idea of materials science, of finding the best material has been just spread across all different areas. You know, like there's biological applications of this like like hip implants or drug delivery. I've seen this like cool tendon and wound repair that's using different bioactive materials. Weren't you telling me, Jono, about some like heart patch thing that came from materials science?
[00:10:42] Jono Falconer
Yeah, an old lab that I used to work with in Utah did research with these things called cell sheets, where they would basically grow a layer of stem cells and then they could turn those stem cells into different types of tissues. So they turned the stem cells into heart cells. And then you could actually put this this cell sheet almost like a Band-Aid on someone's heart. And the cell sheet would actually beat like a heart in the dish with electrical impulse.
[00:11:08] Claire Concannon
That's so amazing. That just blows my mind.
[00:11:11] Jono Falconer
Yeah, it's not bad, but even cooler material science allowed us to skateboard.
[00:11:20] Claire Concannon
(Laughs).
[00:11:20] Jono Falconer
So skateboards used to have metal wheels and those couldn't really work because they couldn't grip the road, so you just slide all over the place. So then they developed clay wheels, which were a little bit better, but they would sort of fall apart and then if you hit like a stick in the road or a pebble, it would just stop your skateboard and you'd fall off. So then this guy who worked at a plastics factory designed polyurethane wheels, which were sticky. So they gripped the road really well and they could also roll over twigs and pebbles more easily. And it basically allowed skateboarding to become what it was. So if you ride a skateboard, thank materials science.
[00:12:00] Claire Concannon
Surely the peak of materials science accomplishment. Why do they even continue?
[00:12:05] Jono Falconer
I don't know. They should have quit while they were ahead.
[00:12:06] Claire Concannon
(Laughs). They were helping people with damaged heart cell walls.
[00:12:14] Jono Falconer
Well, I guess if we if we want to have a world that we can skateboard in, we do have some issues that ah that we need to, that we need to address, that materials science can help us work on.
[00:12:25] Claire Concannon
Yeah, true. Like sustainability is a big area that materials science can help us. You know, one of the things that researchers in the MacDiarmid Institute are working on is this collaboration to develop flexible solar panels.
[00:12:40] Jono Falconer
Yeah.
[00:12:41] Claire Concannon
Have you seen these? They're so cool. So the like the scientists in New Zealand are working on the dyes that are in these solar panels so that they can absorb the light and then convert to energy. But like you see, people have made pictures of what they imagine that you could use these solar panels for.
[00:12:58] Jono Falconer
Like I could wear a solar panel shirt and then plug it into an electric skateboard. Then I could just, like. (Laughs).
[00:13:05] Claire Concannon
Dream big, Jono, dream big. What about a cape? (Laughs).
[00:13:09] Jono Falconer
That would be cooler. Where can I buy this?
[00:13:16] Claire Concannon
So material science is not yet peaked for skateboarding. (Laughs). Skate cape is on the horizon. But, yeah...
[00:13:26] Jono Falconer
We need to patent that.
[00:13:28] Claire Concannon
I mean, your issue there would be... (Laughs). You'd only be able to go up hills if the sun was there, right?
[00:13:38] Jono Falconer
That's true. Unless we had a battery.
[00:13:39] Claire Concannon
Unless we had a battery. I've led you nicely to the battery problem and this is something that materials science can help us address as well. So like, there's a lot of talk in terms of a shift to electric cars, but that will require more lithium batteries, which will require extracting more lithium from the earth. There's not a huge amount of lithium in the earth.
[00:14:03] Jono Falconer
Right.
[00:14:03] Claire Concannon
And then at the end of the batteries lifespan, it's not really easy to recycle. And also the lithium ion batteries also use cobalt, which is very rare. And so this is one of the things again, there's a lab in Wellington they're working on trying to figure out if they could substitute the lithium with aluminum, and then you've got aluminum batteries.
[00:14:25] Jono Falconer
And we have a lot of aluminum. It's actually the third most common element on Earth.
[00:14:32] Claire Concannon
Yeah, and a lot easier to recycle as well.
[00:14:34] Jono Falconer
Yeah.
[00:14:35] Claire Concannon
And I think this shows the progression of materials science. You know, we've said it's been around forever. People are picking the best material, whether it's to like make tools or go hunting or, you know, go to war. But now, not only are we looking for the best material to do the job that we want done, but we're also thinking about where is that material sourced from, what is the economic and the environmental cost to get that material? And we're thinking full circle, you know, at the end of its life cycle, where does that material go? How can it be broken down, reused or recycled?
[00:15:14] Jono Falconer
Most importantly, the skate cape.
[00:15:16] Claire Concannon
We'll get right on that patent, Jono. Well, I guess that's our 15 minutes up. Um what are we going to talk about next time, Jono?
[00:15:23] Jono Falconer
We are going to talk about alternative energy and specifically, solar power with Justin Hodgkiss who is the Co-Director of the MacDiarmid Institute.
[00:15:35] Claire Concannon
Cool. 15 Minutes Smarter is brought to you by MacDiarmid Institute and if our listeners wanted to find out more about the material science research happening right here in New Zealand, where can they go?
[00:15:47] Jono Falconer
M A C D I A R M I D dot A C dot N Z
[00:15:47] Claire Concannon
(Laughs). Beautiful. Thanks for listening!
END OF TRANSCRIPT