Hello and you're listening to a special edition of the Naked Scientists.

We're here at the Cambridge Science Center with our wonderful studio audience.

And we're ready to discuss some amazing engineering today from levitating trains to earthquake-proof buildings.

And we've got some brilliant panelists of engineers here to

answer your questions. I'm Ginny Smith and my panel are going to introduce

themselves now so let's start from that end. I'm David Cardwell. I'm professor of

superconducting engineering here in the Department of Engineering in Cambridge. I

head the Bulks superconductivity group and we make materials that have got

amazing properties we're going to demonstrate some this evening

but they generate large magnetic fields in a very stable way and there are a number of exciting

applications just around the corner.

My name is Sinachikos.

I am a PhD student currently at the Department of

Engineering. I work on earthquake resistance structures.

earthquakes are fairly common hazard at some parts of the world and we need to make sure

that our structures are

resilient and we work on a particular type of isolation system which is

rocking. Hi my name is Lucy Fielding. I'm a postdoctoral researcher at

the Department of Materials Science and Metology working with the

Rolls Royce group there and my area of expertise is super strong steel.

So I'm interested in understanding what gives these extreme materials the properties that they generate

so that we can use that to design even more extreme materials.

...