While Jodie's Australian-wide tour is being finalised, we were able to ask some 'get to know you' questions about Jodie and her work.
What inspired you to
become a physicist?
At my high school in country Victoria all the kids who were
classified as ‘clever’ were strongly encouraged into the science and maths
subjects. So I took chemistry, biology, physics and maths. This turned out to
be a good fit as I found science both interesting and fun- in particular the
pracs were really fun. And it way easier for me than writing long essays where
there was no right answer (how on earth to deal with that?). The deal was
sealed when I was in Year 10 or 11 I went on one of those camps for science
kids at Monash University. I had a ball, met lots of other kids who were also
interested in science so then it was just a question of what type of science? Physics
ended up winning the day for the somewhat trivial reasons that I found
chemistry uninspiring in school and there were too many big words to spell in
biology! Plus Physics was the most mathematical of the sciences and I also
enjoyed that aspect of the work. So here I am!
Who would you say
your Physics hero is?
I have been asked this question in a job interview before
and it is a really great question. When I was growing up I greatly admired many
scientists who were not physicists - the environmentalist David Suzuki and the
giant of natural history David Attenborough for instance. Actually
I don’t think I knew any Physicists as apart from Einstein and Newton – it was
well before Brian Cox’s time! Then I read some of Richard Feynman books and he
was my hero for a while. But now, given I am lucky enough work as a physicist
(pinches self!), I am constantly surrounded by amazing scientist and my real
heroes are much closer and more personal. For instance, I admire the way Prof Marvin Cohen at UC Berkeley works so effectively with his students and only
takes 2-3 students on at a time because he doesn’t feel he can have a close
relationship with a large group while still producing remarkable results. I
admire the way Dr Guoyin Shen, the head of the High Pressure Sector at Argonne
National Lab takes the time to chat with the groups visiting his beamline and
gently offers his scientific insights and experience. I admire the work of Dr Katie Mack at Melbourne University for her strong outreach work on her own
terms and closest to home I really do admire my mentor Prof Jim Williams at ANU
who has simply trusted in me from the beginning and who has taught me so much
in terms of both science and life.
What do you think has
been the most exciting discovery (in Physics?) of the last 10 years?
I guess you would have to say the discovery of Dark Matter
and Dark Energy is the most exciting discovery in physics for some time. Really,
how can you go past the discovery of ~95% of the universe? Even if you argue
that this has zero impact on our daily lives, and indeed by definition you
cannot interact with Dark Matter and Energy so this is very true, such big discoveries
really do help inspire the public and are the stuff of big scientific dreams.
But if I can be allowed a second place, I would like to take
an example from my own field of condensed matter physics (sometimes called
‘materials science’ – it is basically the science of ‘stuff’!). Currently
thousands of materials scientists all over the world are tackling one of the
major challenges of our generation – how to generate and store enough clean energy
to run our planet. In the past 10 years the advances in solar and battery
technologies have been remarkable. However, it is hard to point to one specific
scientific discovery from one specific scientific group or person that has made
the difference. The truth is that the idea of a single ‘big’ discovery by a
single scientist is not how much of modern science works. The real advances
come from large groups of scientists all contributing a small solution to the problem.
So perhaps this is not as exciting as Dark Matter and Dark Energy – but you can
argue it is a lot more important for the future of the human race.
One of your areas of
expertise is in nanoindentation, can you tell us a little about that?
Certainly! Nanoindentation is essentially a method to
measuring how things deform when you poke them, and, as prefix ‘nano’ suggests,
we can do this at really small scales. How small? Well a nanometre is
mind-bogglingly small. So small it basically impossible for the human brain to
visualise – we are talking about the scale of atoms - a single gold atom is
about one third of a nanometre. Anyway back to the nanoindenter. This
instrument uses a specially shaped diamond to ‘poke’ materials at the
nanoscale. Depending on the force applied to the diamond tip, and how deep the
diamond tip gets pushed into the sample, we can gain lots of useful information
like the mechanical properties of material being poked at the nanoscale. And
why do we care about that? Well one of the fascinating quirks of nature is that
as the scale of objects shrinks down to the nanoscale, their physical properties
actually change. This is the basis of nanoscience and nanotechnology. So
something that is ‘soft’ at a normal human length scale might actually be quite
‘hard’ at the nanoscale.
One topic that you’re
covering in your lecture is super-hard materials, how do these materials impact
on our daily lives?
Many many scientists and engineers are working on making
better, stronger and harder materials. We rely on such advanced materials
everyday – we just don't always see how amazing they are and far technology has
come. Superhard materials such as diamond, sapphire, cubic boron-nitride and
other materials are used as thin-films, coating, cutting tools and in a vast
number of applications that require hard, wear-resistant materials – from a
coating on an artificial heart, to the inside of a fusion reactor to the face
of a watch or phone. (Although having dropped a phone recently I reckon there
is still lots of work to do!)
Any advice for
aspiring young scientists?
My advice is to always hang in there. One of the interesting
and challenging aspects to establishing a career in science is that there is
not one clear path to success. This can appear super scary to a young person thinking
about starting out in the field but it is actually a huge advantage. Just think
about it. If there are lots of paths available you should be able to find the
one that best suits you.
So hang in there if you fail a few subjects - we have all
been there! Hang in there if you aren’t dux of your school - you don't have to
be the smartest kid in the state to do science. Hang in there if your
experiments are going wrong or if you feel there are no jobs to apply for when
you graduate. Remember that a career in science is diverse and can range from
the laboratory to the classroom to industry and government. And importantly
hang in there because of ‘science’ and the good it can do society. Science
really needs people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. Science needs
people who are ‘people-people’ as well as strong logical thinkers. Science
needs people who can see the opportunities that a discovery could uncover and
people who can run complex instruments while teaching a group of students at
the same time. We need all types in science – so if you hang in there chances
are you will find your niche that will enable you to contribute your love of
science to create a better world. And what can be better than that!
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