40-42 Chalk Farm Rd
London NW1 8BG
UK
Cryogenics typically works with liquid nitrogen (-196 degrees C or 77 K) and liquid helium (-268.8 degrees C or 4.2 K). Down at these temperatures, all sorts of unusual things can happen – electrical resistance can disappear, almost anything, from frogs to surfers, can levitate, liquid can climb out of its container, biological processes can be slowed almost to a halt. With some deft application of science, some clever calculations and some ingenious engineering, all of this is possible and more – yet for some reason, whenever you say you work in cryogenics, the first thing people ask is, “Do you freeze dead people? Or aliens?”
Join us to uncover some of the incredible things that cryogenics can do – and already has done – for you. We won’t be freezing any dead people but we will explain why it’s currently not a particularly sensible idea – and we may freeze an alien or two…
Jess Spurrell is about to submit her thesis on Cryogenic Engineering & Superconductivity at the University of Southampton. This is almost entirely unrelated to her MEng degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering with European Studies, which she studied also at the University of Southampton and at the SupAéro institute in Toulouse, France.
She has given over 30 talks, workshops and demonstrations around the UK including at Winchester and Brighton Science festivals, Science Show-off, Researchers’ Café, The Science Room @ the Art House and more. Since April 2016 she was also managing the RCUK-funded Talk to US! school-university partnership initiative and since January 2017 this role has morphed into the university’s first School-University Partnership Officer.