• Question: if you could choose any element to study what would it be?

    Asked by edwardg to Alice, Bose, Christian, Emma, Steve on 16 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by The_Real_Cortinz.
    • Photo: Steve Marsden

      Steve Marsden answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      Hydrogen.

      As a particle physicist we’re concerned with the smallest of the small, dealing the subatomic particles. The absolute largest this I could see me wrapping my head around is a Hydrogen atom. 😛

    • Photo: Benjamin Bose

      Benjamin Bose answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      Maybe Uranium, or any radioactive element. I think radioactivity is really interesting. Our most precise clocks use radioactive elements to ‘count’ time. I think there is a beautiful relationship between time, probability and radioactive decay which would be wonderful to work on 🙂

    • Photo: Alice Harpole

      Alice Harpole answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      Probably Carbon – it can take so many different forms, including graphite, diamond, nanotubes and graphene. There seems to be lots of exciting research going on at the moment with graphene in particular – they seem to find new uses for it almost every week! I think it would be great to be involved with some of this research.

    • Photo: Emma Dean

      Emma Dean answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      I’d choose fluorine, because it’s the most reactive element in the periodic table. I love explosions and fire and making things go bang. So I think fluorine would be really fun to play with in a lab all day.

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