News

We’re keen to help close the gender gap in our sector, and Professor Nicola Symonds and Rachel Triggs are ideally placed to act as role models for the next generation of women in STEM. They recently took part in a careers fair at St Anne’s, a secondary school for girls in Southampton, to talk about the exciting paths science and engineering can open up and to share their own career journeys.

A shout out on International Women’s Day to all the talented, inspiring women who are doing brilliant work in engineering – including our own Nicola, Ilaria, Sam and Rachel! Unfortunately it’s still the case that women are under-represented in this sector, so we’re proud that the nC² team bucks the trend. We’ll continue with our outreach work, with the aim of showing girls and young women that science and engineering can be ‘for them’.

Find out more about the expertise and career paths of Nicola, Ilaria, Sam, and Rachel.

We put two chocolate bars to the test in a Battle of the Bars… and the results are in! After rigorous 3-point bending tests, the winner is (drumroll….) the KitKat! Our mechanical testing consultant Dr Ben Cunningham found that the Crunchie has an Ultimate Flexural Strength of 180 kPa, the Wispa has 830 kPa, but the KitKat was the clear winner at 1,680 kPa. See the video for footage and graphs. 

Learn more about our mechanical testing capabilities.

A really enjoyable visit to Knightwood Primary School where our Director, Professor Nicola Symonds, gave Year 5 pupils a hands-on introduction to key ideas in materials science and structures, with the help of various props including a large foam noodle, paper clips and mugs.

She also answered lots of questions about her failure investigation work, including “What is the biggest thing you’ve ever investigated?” – the answer being a cruise ship!

We were delighted to hear the teacher’s feedback: “It was a memorable learning experience for them which is always what we are looking to achieve!” Hopefully we’ve inspired some future materials scientists…

Important work in our lab to answer a critical festive question – how much force does it take to pull a Christmas cracker? According to Dr Benjamin Cunningham‘s test, 135 N – equivalent to nearly 14 kg – to break the cracker, and 60 mm extension to make it go bang!