Consider please, the supercapacitor. To the uninitiated it sounds almost like it should be featured in a comic or a piece of kit in a 1960s space adventure series. But these devices are not imaginary – they exist and may actually be the key to clean energy for future transport systems across the world.
Plastics are used everywhere in our life. They are made into everything from spoons to electronics covers, and countless other things in between. They are considered as one of the most fantastic inventions in human history. But what can we do now we are realising that plastics are not really that fantastic?
150 years ago, Russian chemist, Dmitrii Mendeleev, first presented his idea to organise all the known elements into a handy table according to their atomic number, electrons and properties. Periodic Law, as he called his system, transformed science.
What can women do for engineering and what can engineering do for the world? We ask some of our high profile women engineers.
Imagine a world where you are quite likely to die after having a tooth out. Sounds like dark ages, right? Well, according to leading researchers, this could be life in the near future because many of the antibiotic drugs we have now are going to stop working.
If you are under the impression that TB is a disease of the past – you are mistaken. Dr Elizabeth Fullam leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers in the Fullam Lab at the University of Warwick, studying the bacteria which cause tuberculosis (TB). Her group is carrying out urgent research into understanding the bacterium and finding new treatments for a disease which kills almost two million people worldwide every year. With antibiotic resistance on the rise, TB threatens to kill millions more.
It’s the UN’s International Day for Women and Girls in Science on February 11. We hear from four of Warwick’s young women research scientists, who share their hopes for their research and the future.
A diamond is a rare and precious find which has been treasured by humans for thousands of years. It’s the gift of love; a luxury product; an iconic badge of the glamourous. Or is it more important than that? Researchers at the University of Warwick, and collaborating universities across the UK, are proving that a diamond is much more than just a sparkly bauble. Scientists can grow synthetic diamond in the lab with the vision of using it in a huge range of innovative applications.
It’s been a bit chilly recently. In the UK, temperatures dropped dramatically. We’ve not only experienced arctic nights, but days where the temperatures didn’t trouble zero. It was worrying for those who did not have the benefit of a centrally-heated home and annoying and dangerous for commuters. But could science help us tackle these kinds of conditions in the future? Could we prevent road and rail from freezing? Could humans survive for prolonged periods in sub-zero temperatures?
It's British Science Week and academics from the Faculty of Science will be showing thousands of young people the exciting things they get up to in the lab, at the Big Bang Science and Engineering Fair. Discover the chemical processes going on inside your tablet.
