Stripping down science, the naked scientists.

The Naked Scientists. How do you make a brand new metal? And how does this brand new metal make its way into an aeroplane?

This week we're discovering how computer modeling can create new metal mixtures or alloys that have some very exciting new properties.

We'll also be heading off the laboratory to hear how these newly designed metals are put through their paces.

So what we're looking at now is a box furnace and what we'd use these for is putting in our

samples to give them the heat treatments and we do this for a long period of time right here

we've got two more furnaces next to us there are 800 and a thousand degree

centigrade and they're both on for a thousand hours. It's a long time and a very high heat and in the news the deep sea-dwelling bacteria that are still eating a meal that dates from the times of the dinosaurs.

Plus how a brain interface device can allow powerless patients to control robotic arms giving

them the freedom to move again.

The Naked Scientists Podcast is powered by UK Fast, the UK's best hosting provider on the web at UKfast.

dot-co. UK. Metal all the

aloys are mixtures of different chemical elements and adding certain elements

can make a metal harder others can alter the melting point and help

make the metal resist corrosion.

But there are tens of metals to choose from,

and how can we work out which to include

and in what proportions?

Professor Roger Reed is Director of Research

at the School of Metallogy and Materials

at Birmingham University.

He joins us now.

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