What goes into making and commercializing solar cells? How could solar cells help address global poverty?

Nicole Kuepper: Low-cost Solar from PopTech on Vimeo.

Check out this video that talks about why solar cells are important and interesting and weighs this against some of the things limiting their widespread adoption. We all see ways that the world can be improved. Science provides the basis for technologies that can help in these improvement efforts.

Why is math so hard and boring?

http://www.livescience.com

A common opinion among my friends is that math and physics are difficult and boring subjects. The general opinion seems to be that math is something you either understand or don’t understand - like it’s an inherent ability you either have or don’t have.  This is perhaps true to some extent. We are different and we have different preconditions to enjoy and be good at different things. But this is just one, minor, part.

Math is like all other tools. You first need to learn how it works and how to use it. In addition, you need a lot of practice in order to get good at it. You might never understand it in depth, most scientists don’t, but that doesn't have to prevent it from being a powerful (and enjoyable) tool for you to use. It’s like learning a new language. Some basics in, e.g. French, together with some practice won’t make you the translator of the next edition of Baudelaire’s collected poems, but it will certainly be a helpful skill for you to have in order to get the food you want in a restaurant or to find your hotel during your vacation in France. Likewise with math, the chance that you’re the next Einstein who will develop new pioneering theories is not that big but with some math skills you can apply the mathematical tools that already are out there to read and understand your research.

It’s interesting to note how the attitudes to math differ in different countries and cultures. This is reflected math and science proficiency of children from different countries. In international comparison, like the PISA test, large difference between children of the same age from countries with comparable economics can be seen. Two countries that always are listed high are Finland and Japan. In Finland, the good results are often attributed to well-educated teachers and the general high status of the teaching profession. In Japan, the different pedagogy applied when teaching math to children could be a contributing factor. An example of the Japanese math pedagogy is shown in the video below.

All you need to do to multiply 

large numbers is to count some dots – magical!!

Why do scientists do research that will likely never come to market or be competitive with existing technologies?

That is a very good question. There are a variety of answers that are all true in different circumstances.

• Although the material or concept being studied does not make much sense now, we don't know what might happen in the future. While this isn't always the case (sometimes, physics and chemistry make it apparent (sometimes taking some work) that studying something for a given application will be fruitless), it is true that you often don't know. For example, liquid crystals (what is in LCD displays) were discovered in 1888. No major applications were even thought of until between 1950 and 1960 and they weren't commercialized until 1968 [1]. Now, these displays are found almost everywhere. Similarly quantum physics was seemingly an academic extraction until it became important for understanding semiconductors and industries developed that needed it. Einstein's theory of relativity had no practical applications that could be commercialized until the space age, satellites, and wireless communication made it necessary. Few would argue now that these were unimportant or fruitless studies.
• Sometimes concepts are learned about one system that can be applied to other, more useful systems in the future that may or may not yet have been discovered. Also, sometimes these "model" systems are investigated because they are less expensive or easier to make. Sometimes it is easier to learn something about one system and apply it to another than to make samples and study the other system, straight off. You don't always know which technologies will succeed and which ones will fall by the wayside.

[1]     http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/timeline-the-early-history-of-the-liquid-crystal-display

Dance your science!?

Research isn't complete until it’s written down and has been shared to others - communicating your research is an ethical duty! Normally, scientists share their results to other scientists by publication in peer-reviewed journals or by presenting their results on scientific conferences. The peer-reviewing offers a quality check of your research as the peer-reviewers are supposed to be other researchers within the field that have the knowledge to understand your work exactly.

from http://undsci.berkeley.edu/

Another very important part is communicating what happens in science to the public. Science has a big impact on humanity and for people to be able to understand what long lasting effects it will have on society and to decide in what direction they want science to go, they need to understand the surrounding issues. Here, journalists reporting scientific news play an important role, but also universities around the world that need to do a good job at training future scientists to communicate and become storytellers!

This is a challenging task as the scientific language barriers to overcome may be huge. I often find myself stuck with awkward terminology when describing my research to friends and family. Something that actually is pretty easy to understand and very interesting, turns into something boring and complicated just because I’m using the wrong words.

An alternative way to make your research interesting for the public could perhaps be by a dance (!). This, not too serious but yet very entertaining, approach was introduced by the biologist John Bohannon who invented the Science Magazine’s Dance your PhD competition. In this competition PhD students present their research topics by a dance performance. Here are two of my favorite productions which also are material science related!


A super-alloy is born: The romantic revolution of Lightness & Strength from Peter Liddicoat on Vimeo.

Microstructure-Property relationships in Ti2448 components produced by Selective Laser Melting: A Love Story from Joel Miller on Vimeo.

Kitchen Chemistry you can do at Home (ask your parents first)

You can do some pretty cool science experiments at home with your parent/guardian's permission. Watch this video to learn how!

What do you observe? A good scientist must record his or her observations.

What other types of energy are there? Why solar? Why not wind energy, nuclear energy, or hydropower?

That is a good question. There are a variety of types of energy, such as:

• Mechanical (like wind)
• Magnetic
• Electric
• Light
• Chemical (like fossil fuels)
• Gravitational (like hydropower)
• Nuclear
• Thermal (like geothermal)

This video talks about the benefits  of renewable energy sources. Check it out!

Solar energy is a good energy source because there is more than enough of it to meet our current energy needs and also gives us a lot of room to grow. It also causes less harm to the environment than many of the other technologies available and it isn't something we will run out of (unless the sun goes out, in which case we would be in a whole lot of trouble). Solar energy, also, is abundant in some of the most remote places to which it wouldn't make economic (or political) sense to build transmission lines. In some places, solar energy is going to be the most competitive technology. In other places, nuclear, hydro, or geothermal will be the most competitive. In many places, fossil fuels will reign for a while.

What is it like to be a researcher?

I must point out that everyone has different experiences and it is different for everyone. When transitioning between being a student to being a researcher, I noticed several things. Here are my observations and experiences:

1. You become comfortable, yet not content, with not knowing things. We research things because they are unknown. There is no known answer and it is up to you to figure it out, or at least make some sense of what you see. Things do not always turn out how you plan or even predict. This can also be a good thing if it tells you more about how things really work.
   
2. You may not come up with a catch-all "answer". Sometimes you can only rule out other things that may happen. This can be nearly as useful as a complete answer. For example, for my experiments, x-ray diffraction is not good at telling me whether I just have Cu2ZnSnS4 or if I have a mixture of Cu2ZnSnS4 and ZnS. It is still a useful technique because it can tell me about when and whether other phases form and can give me kinetic information on many of the reactions that can take place in the film, but it does not give me a complete answer. I can use other techniques to make up for this limitation and can still get some good information from the technique. 
3. Questions can be more fascinating than answers, since they lead to more questions, which allow you to reach more complete answers. I have been recently reading some papers that talk about the crystal structure of Cu2NiSnS4. Several papers say that it is cubic, whereas one paper says that their material was of a wurtzite (hexagonal) structure and all have data to back up their claims. Why are these different groups seeing different things?
4. Other people will know things that you do not. This does not make you stupid or mean that you are less intelligent. It is just an opportunity to learn more and see how you can use what you know to help them and how you can use what you learn from other people. Questions are a sign of an active, agile mind. 

   

   Photo from Travelated

5. The pictures that you see in the media and group websites depicting scientists at work are often hilarious. In our efforts to get as many people on a research team into pictures and appear cool and cutting edge, poses often look funny from other angles. You often end up with photos of yourself staring intently at steel blocks that do nothing. If the photo were taken from any other angle, it would look ridiculous. Also, you don't always work with shiny new equipment. Sometimes the old stuff works better or you already have old equipment on hand that suits your purposes just fine. Sometimes you just need to creatively make something from what you have available. Scientists have budgets, too.

Puzzler: Are we there yet? A hiker's conundrum.

Note: This puzzler was adapted the puzzler on 12/18/2006 from Cartalk.com.

Jack and Sam go on a hike in a national park. They plan to go from point A to point C via point B. At A, they see a sign that says, "8 hours until point C". They start off. At point B, they see a sign saying "3 hours to point A" and "3 hours to point C". How can this be?