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Asked by aminmorrisons to Yasmin, Natasha, Jemma, James, Davide, Craig, Charlie on 24 Jan 2017.
Question: what is your favourite invention in your field
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Charles Footer answered on 24 Jan 2017:
I think the coolest things I get to work with are the Electron microscopes which let me see on a computer screen something one billion times smaller than they appear on the screen. It’s a completely different world down there and you really get to see what makes the world and how little we actually see of it. Imagine being that small!
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Yasmin Ali answered on 24 Jan 2017:
The latest thing I’ve come across in the energy industry which I think is really cool is cryogenic energy storage. At the moment, we can’t store electricity very well, it has to be used as it’s generated.
Cryogenic storage is the process of using electricity to turn air into a liquid (this happens at -190 degrees Celsius), store that liquid in something that is like a giant thermos flask, then when we need the electricity back we warm the air up, which makes it expand by 700 times.
The expansion can be used to drive a turbine and then a generator, which generates the electricity back. It’s pretty clever!
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