• Question: Have you ever invented anything?

    Asked by 824speq48 to Hannah, Stephen on 6 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by lsteed24.
    • Photo: Hannah Currivan

      Hannah Currivan answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      I have made a rail with a stepping motor which flex’s data tapes! I did this as part of my Particle Physics Summer Internship at the University of Glasgow. These data tapes were prototypes for CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) home of the Large Hadron Collider, and especially for one of its detectors called the LHCb ( Large Hadron Collider beauty), its jobs is to detect slight differences between matter and antimatter. The reason I was flexing the data tapes that are to be used for the LHCb was to see if the data being read was being affected by the small flexing it will experience as the detector moves (the detectors move, but very little). This upgrade to the LHCb has been happening since 2018 and will continue for 2019. 🙂 🙂 🙂

    • Photo: Stephen O'Connor

      Stephen O'Connor answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      I have helped to build many things and write a lot of computer code but I don’t think I could claim to have ever invented anything!
      However, if I was to invent something…..I would love it to would be……a quantum computer!
      Fully functioning quantum computers don’t exist yet but many scientists and engineers around the world are working hard to make one.
      The computational power of a working quantum computer might lead to the discovery of new materials by making it possible to simulate the behaviour of matter at the atomic level.

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