Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World, Helen Czerski

Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World is a book that will recalibrate our views of a huge and defining feature of our home planet Earth – our ocean. All of the Earth’s oceans, from the equator to the poles, form a single engine powered by sunlight – a ‘Blue Machine’. This book uncovers what the Blue Machine does, why it works, and the many ways it has influenced animals, weather, and human history and culture.

Physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean. She examines the messengers, passengers, and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves, to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark (capable of living for hundreds of years), Czerski explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls, and underwater waterfalls that all have their place in the ocean’s complex, interlinked system.

Timely, elegant, and passionately argued, Blue Machine presents a fresh perspective on what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet. The understanding it offers is crucial to our future. Drawing on years of experience at the forefront of marine science, Czerski captures the magnitude and subtlety of Earth’s defining aquatic feature, showing us the thrilling extent to which we are at the mercy of this great engine.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk. 

About the author

Dr Helen Czerski is, first and foremost, a physicist, but has become a renowned oceanographer, presenter, author, and bubble enthusiast along the way. Born and raised near Manchester, she became passionate about maths and science, which continued into her studies in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and her PhD in experimental explosives physics.

After completing her PhD, she continued her search for subjects that could build upon her experiments but with applications in the natural world – which is how she developed an interest in bubbles and oceans at The Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. After her tenure as a postdoc at the Graduate School of Oceanography in Rhode Island, she returned to the UK to start her own research programme on the physics of oceanic bubbles at the University of Southampton; she now continues these studies at her current academic home, University College London.

Since 2011, she has been a frequent presenter for the Fully Charged Show and The Cosmic Shambles Network, alongside hosting an ocean podcast for the Bertarelli Foundation called Ocean Matters. She continues to be fascinated by the physics of the everyday world and the oceans as well as conveying the beauty and ingenuity of the physical world around us.

You can follow Helen Czerski’s work here:

Twitter: @helenczerski
Instagram: @helen_czerski
Website: helenczerski.net
Mastodon: fediscience.org/@helenczerski

With thanks to Synergy for their support.

Dr Lin Lanying

Described as “the mother of semiconductor materials” in China, Dr Lin Lanying, 林兰英, was an engineer and physicist who contributed to the development of semiconductor and aerospace materials, particularly silicon. She is credited with developing the first monocrystalline silicon in China, a key semiconductor used as a component in virtually all modern electronic equipment to this day.

Lin was born on 7 February 1918 in Fujian, southeastern China. She graduated from Fukien Christian University in Fuzhou with a bachelor’s degree in physics aged 22 before moving to the United States, having been awarded a scholarship to attend Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. In 1931 she gained another bachelor’s degree in mathematics, followed by a doctorate in solid state physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955.

After finishing her studies, Lin was hired as an engineer at Sylvania Electric Products, a US manufacturer of equipment including semiconductors (crystalline materials that can serve as foundations for electronic devices such as computers). In 1957, she made the decision to return to China, despite attempts by FBI agents to persuade her to remain in the US due to hostility between the two countries.

Once back in her home country, Lin became a researcher at the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), before taking on a position at CAS’s Institute of Semiconductors, where she would spend the rest of her life as a scientist. At the Institute of Semiconductors, Lin spearheaded the development of several aerospace and semiconductor materials that had not yet been used in China, including monocrystalline silicon, gallium arsenide and germanium.

This foundational work has been credited with contributing to later breakthroughs in microelectronics and optoelectronics in China, including the invention of transistor radios. Lin is also believed to have built China’s first furnace to extract silicon metal.

In 1980, Lin was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, becoming honorary director of the Chinese Institute of Electronics eight years later. She died on 4 March 2003, aged 85.

Further Reading

• Lin Lanying, Wikipedia
• Giants in History – Asia’s Women in Science, Asia Research News
• Telegram From Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson to the Department of State, Office of the Historian, 15 May 1957

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

Professor Michiyo Tsujimura

Professor Emeritus Michiyo Tsujimura, 辻村みちよ, was an agricultural scientist, biochemist and educator, and the first woman to earn a doctoral degree in agriculture in Japan. Alongside her colleague Seitaro Miura, she discovered that green tea contains vitamin C. Tsujimura’s research into the chemical components of green tea and its corresponding health benefits is credited with helping to popularise the drink internationally, particularly in the United States.

Tsujimura was born on 17 September 1888 in what is now Okegawa, a city northwest of Tokyo. She initially worked as a high school teacher, but dreamed of a career in science. At the time, female students were rarely accepted into Japanese universities, which meant Tsujimura had to be creative. In 1920, she began volunteering as a laboratory assistant in the agricultural chemistry department at Hokkaido Imperial University, researching the nutrition of silkworms. The role was unpaid, but it got Tsujimura where she wanted to be: in a lab.

She transferred to the medical chemical laboratory at Tokyo Imperial University in 1922, but her time here was cut short when an earthquake destroyed key academic buildings. And so Tsujimura moved to the scientific research institute RIKEN, where she was accepted as a research student working on nutritional chemistry.

It was at RIKEN that Tsujimura discovered Vitamin C in green tea in 1924, co-authoring an article with Miura about their findings in the journal Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry. Their research has been credited with dramatically boosting the market for green tea in the US. Tsujimura continued to study the chemical components of green tea throughout the 1920s and into the next decade, isolating and extracting the compounds catechin, tannin and gallocatechin, all of which are still recognised for their anticancer properties. In 1932, she was awarded her doctorate in agriculture from Tokyo Imperial University, the first woman to gain such a qualification in Japan.

Tsujimura held research positions at RIKEN before being appointed professor at Ochanomizu University in 1949. She also served as a lecturer at Jissen’s Women’s University and as the first dean of the faculty of home economics at Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School. Over the course of her career she published more than 20 academic papers and continued to teach until 1963.

In 1968, Japan’s emperor honoured Tsujimura with an Order of the Precious Crown in recognition of her contributions to science. She died the following year on 1 June 1969, aged 80.

Her green tea research won her the Japan Prize of Agricultural Science in 1956.

Further Reading

• Michiyo Tsujimura, Wikipedia
• Giants in History – Asia’s Women in Science, Asia Research News
• Michiyo Tsujimura’s 133rd birthday, Google Doodles, 17 September 2021

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

How to build a racing car, Fran Scott and Paul Boston

Build your own functional racing car from household objects in this step-by-step guide based on the science behind Formula One. Take your place at the starting gate and fire up your engine: it’s time to build your car! Join presenter and maker Fran Scott for a crash course in racing engineering, then use your newfound skills to build an awesome air-powered machine using household objects. 

Providing easy-to-follow instructions from the chassis to the engine, young readers will discover the science behind Formula One in this book. This project will walk budding engineers through the process of building a Formula One car and introducing the team that constructs them. The book then shows the reader how to build their own car by explaining each car part, suggesting household objects that could function as different car parts, in addition to troubleshooting, problem-solving, testing, tweaking, and racing!

The clear and colourful illustrations are peppered with fascinating facts and activities, offering encouragement that the process of making mistakes is what being an engineer is all about. With this brilliant and funny STEM book, young readers should have no problem creating their car one step at a time. So what are you waiting for? 3, 2, 1 … let’s race! 

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk here  

About the author

A neuroscientist by education, but an engineer and pyrotechnician at heart, Fran Scott uses her passion and knowledge to entertain and excite audiences with her high-impact demonstrations. She has worked in science communication for the past 17 years, explaining seemingly complex concepts in digestible steps (often using self-built props), and is widely recognised for her playful and fiery demonstrations on CBBC’s Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom. She has also presented shows for the BBC, Channel 4, and YouTube, and hosts award-winning podcasts on robotics, innovation, and infrastructure. Since her first appearance in 2012 she has presented over fifteen series and received numerous accolades, including BAFTA nominations, a Japan Prize nomination, and a Royal Television Society award.

Also appealing to an older audience, Fran has fronted The Department of Complaints and has participated as an engineering judge on Series 2 of Lego Masters and as an engineering expert on Engineering Catastrophes, How Hacks Work, and Abandoned Engineering. With her own stage production company (Great Scott! Productions) Fran also takes centre stage, producing high-octane shows. Her work as the Science Content Producer at the Royal Institution sees her heading up the demonstration team for their world-famous Christmas Lectures.

You can follow Fran Scott’s work here:

Twitter: @Frans_facts
Instagram: @frans_facts
Website: https://www.franscott.co.uk

About the illustrator

Paul Boston is an award-winning children’s illustrator who studied illustration and sequential design at Brighton University. Paul lists his inspirations as 1950’s children’s books, antique maps and diagrams, 17th Century engravings, gothic art and Japanese prints; to name just a few! Paul’s fun and playful style has a wide appeal and has been commissioned across the whole spectrum of publishing including activity books, educational titles, and picture books.

You can follow Paul Boston’s work here:

Website: kidscornerillustration.co.uk/artist/Paul_Boston_KC

With thanks to Synergy for their support.

Professor Helen Quinn

Prof Helen Rhoda Arnold Quinn is a particle physicist and educator. Now professor emerita of particle physics and astrophysics at Stanford University, she has made momentous contributions to theoretical physics. These include the Peccei-Quinn theory, a famous proposed solution to the strong charge-parity (CP) problem. After retiring from academia, Quinn has dedicated her career to strengthening science education in schools.

Born on 19 May 1943, Quinn grew up in Melbourne. She started an undergraduate degree in meteorology at Melbourne University when she was just 16, transferring to Stanford a year later when her father took a job in California. At Stanford she changed her major to physics, gaining her PhD in theoretical physics in 1967.

Quinn relocated to Hamburg for postdoctoral work at the DESY (the German Synchrotron Laboratory) before spending seven years at Harvard University, where she became involved in particle theory. Alongside Howard Georgi and Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg, Quinn demonstrated that three apparently different types of particle interactions (strong, electromagnetic, and weak) become very similar in extremely high-energy processes. This suggests they may actually be three aspects of a single unified force.

When Quinn returned to Stanford, she became professor of physics in the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). In 1977, she formulated the Peccei-Quinn theory with her colleague Roberto Peccei. They were trying to solve a longstanding mystery of particle physics: why does CP-symmetry (the symmetry between matter and antimatter) break in weak interactions, which drive nuclear decay, but not in strong interactions, which hold matter together?

Peccei and Quinn’s solution suggested that the universe may be near-symmetrical. Their model has since been superseded, but it remains one of the best-known and most influential proposed solutions to the CP problem. The Peccei-Quinn theory also predicted the existence of a new particle, the axion, which is used in some theories of supersymmetry and cosmic inflation. Some physicists believe the axion could explain dark matter.

Despite her trailblazing research, Quinn had always been interested in education; as an undergraduate, she assumed she would end up a physics teacher. In 1987, she co-founded and served as president of the Contemporary Physics Education Project (CPEP), a group of teachers, educators and physicists that aims to enhance how the subject is taught. Quinn helped design CPEP’s first product, a chart for particle physics teaching similar to the periodic table, which became a common sight in classrooms across the U.S. and worldwide.

In 2003, Quinn was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which enabled her to join its Board on Science Education (BOSE). She was appointed BOSE’s chair not long before retiring from active physics research in 2010, and held the role until 2014.

As BOSE chair, Quinn spearheaded the production of the “Framework for K-12 Science Education”, which formed the basis of the Next Generation Science Standards. These standards set out what students should understand about science throughout their time at school. Since 2013, they have since been adopted by dozens of US states and proved influential around the world. Quinn has said her ultimate goal is to facilitate education that creates “citizens who can look at a problem in their community and think like a scientist… I want high school and college graduates with capabilities that employers want, whether they come from well-educated families or not.”

Quinn’s work as a particle physicist has been honoured by the International Center for Theoretical Physics’ Dirac Medal in 2000; the American Institute of Physics’ Compton Medal in 2016; and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in 2018, among others.

Further Reading

• Helen Quinn, Wikipedia
• Helen Quinn, Stanford Profiles 
• Helen Quinn, David Zierler, American Institute of Physics, 14 August 2020
• Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn, Driving Around Stanford in a Clunky Jeep, Thomas Lin, Quanta, 15 June 2017
• A Wormhole Between Physics and Education, Thomas Lin, Quanta, 18 October 2016

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.