Profile

My work

I’m a teaching fellow in a university, I specialise in ways to make light and uses of it

My Typical Day

Get to work, email, teach, chat to students, teach, email, make new materials to teach with, home, email, make new materials to teach with

My Interview

• What's your favourite food?

  ice-cream

  What is the most fun thing you've done?

  blowing bubbles, I love bubbles :)

  What did you want to be after you left school?

  I always wanted to be a scientist, at school I wanted to do astrophysics though

  What's the best thing you've done as an engineer?

  I think the teaching bit, I love tinkering on my own, but it is great to inspire the next generation

  What or who inspired you to become an engineer?

  Not a who, a what, I loved taking things apart to see how they worked, then see if I could put them back together in different ways, my parents were very understanding when I inevitably had a ‘spare’ screw

  If you weren't an engineer, what would you be?

  I can’t imagine not doing science and engineering, its fundamental to who I am

• Work photos:

  

  my desk, I was working on a workshop quiz for the last class of term (some lego)

   

  

  my lego scientists and engineers, I love the chalk board and

   

  

  a tiny lego robot

   

  

  the same molecule but dissolved in different solvents (water, methanol, ethanol, propanol & butanol) the different colour in different solutions is an effect called solvatochromism, this was a demo I used for teaching

   

  

  the same molecule giving the colour but the fluorescence in the sample on the left is less due to the presence of sodium chloride (another class demo)

   

  

  again the same molecule, but the one on the right is brighter because the molecule has detected DNA in that sample (again a class demo)

   

  

  all of these solutions are the same concentration (have the same number of molecules in a litre) but the strength of colour is very different (I like class demos :))

   

My profile link:
https://xmaslectures.imanengineer.org.uk/profile/fionadickinson/