She’s a ‘bubble scientist’ on a mission to broaden understanding of the physics of the everyday world – take the foam on your cappuccino…
Helen Czerski has the coolest job in science – she’s a bubble scientist. Or, to give her her full title, she’s a physicist and oceanographer at University College London. When she’s not doing that, you’ve probably seen her on telly as a science presenter for the BBC. She has just finished her first book, Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life, and if that’s not enough she also plays badminton competitively. Sitting at her kitchen table, just returned from a morning coaching session and still wearing her racket club’s black and red polo shirt, she laughs as the Observer opens with the obvious question…
Bubbles?
Yeah, nobody quite knows what to make of it when I tell them, but they’re always interested. Bubbles are like the dolphins of the physics world, right? They make people happy. But scientifically they’re also fascinating. They’re in champagne, they’re used in medicine, they’re in the ocean – they’re the unsung heroes of the physical world. This business of having two phases together – a liquid and a gas interacting – is such a useful thing. It gives you something that neither a gas or a liquid can do on its own.
As the sea ice retreats the Arctic Ocean is more exposed… I’d like to go and study the bubbles underneath breaking waves
I see choosing to have an adventure as a rational decision, even though it might look irrational
Related: Carlo Rovelli: ‘Science is where revolutions happen’
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