Did you know that at this moment there are nearly half a million people travelling overhead, kept aloft by metals that should be molten?
There is an ever increasing demand for more flights, but we also need to reduce the emissions produced by aircraft - this one of the greatest engineering challenges we face today.
We need to produce more efficient engines by running them hotter, but this is not possible with the materials currently available, many of which are operating in temperatures above their melting points! (Find out how this is possible here)
At the Cambridge Rolls-Royce UTC, we aim to design new materials that are able to withstand the extreme conditions experienced in a jet turbine engine. We do this by changing the way the atoms are arranged in materials, since this determines their properties.