I have a topic!

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I found a supervisor, Martin Bazant. On Thursday I went to a talk he was giving to introduce his research first year chemical engineering students. He had already put my name on his list of current students, which was nice to see.

He then gave a seminar for his group, on nonlinear electrokinetics. I believe he basically invented this subject (if any physicists are reading, post a comment asking what the field is, because I think it's very interesting but it will go over the head of someone without about first year undergrad physics), except, as he said, if you do any work in theory, chances are someone did it in Russia a couple of decades ago. According to Google, there are 3740 webpages containing the term "nonlinear electrokinetics", and 883 of them also contain the word bazant. That's 21%, which is pretty good. As a comparison schrodinger and "quantum mechanics" gets 15%, although einstein and relativity beats them both with 49% and maxwell electrodynamics blows everyone away with 88%. Needless to say, smatthey and "drink-along podcasts" beats them all with a whopping 100%. So my relative contribution to the field of drink-along podcasts is even greater than that of Maxwell to electrodynamics ;-)

Third in this sequence of fortunate events was a meeting with Martin. He told me that he had an idea for a project. He is going to take advantage of my unusual (for his students) skill set and funding situation, by starting a more physics-based project (although he is most definitely doing physics), and one for which he doesn't yet have funding. Hopefully once I've done a bit of work, he can get some grant money for me. The basic question is, why do rechargeable batteries wear out? Obviously we know what the chemical reactions taking place in a rechargeable battery are, but we don't know exactly how they happen. Understanding this better can help in ways like designing batteries that can give higher current and recharge more quickly, or are less likely to fail. Until we really know what's going on, it's just trial and error.

It's nice to have a topic so soon (there's no guarantee my thesis will eventually be in this area, or even one closely related, but it's a focus for now). It's even nicer that it's something I can summarise in half a sentence for a general audience. I look forward to getting stuck into some reading on the area when I come home from my holiday.