Laurie Christian IRL

1. 1

2. Laurie Christian and Annette Koo are scientists in the Measurement
Standards Laboratory which is part of IRL (see www.msl.irl.cri.nz). We
are part of the team that provides NZ with measurement standards.
Annette Koo and I are here at this conference because IRL wants to
increase its engagement with the secondary and primary education
sector. We aren’t professional teachers and we realize that we need
your help with this. This desire to engage with education predates Sir
Peter Gluckman’s report “Looking Ahead: Science Education for the
Twenty-First Century”. Steve Chrystall yesterday quoted one of the key
conclusions of this report that there would be value in increasing the
linkages between schools and science research organisations such as
IRL. Annette and I thought it would be good to give you an idea of who
IRL is and then to pick your brains on how we might work together.
IRL has 350 staff mainly in Lower Hutt (shown) but branches in
Christchurch, Auckland. Around 260 science staff and the rest involved
in industry engagement, finance, HR, etc.
2

3. IRL provides research and services in a large range of areas using its 260
science staff who are a mixture of physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and
engineers. I will focus on two areas just to give you a taste of what we do. I
could tell you about high temperature superconductors but you will have heard
about our successes in that area. In fact my son, Matt, works for HTS-110
which is the company that IRL spun-off to commercialise the IP we created. I
could also talk about the Measurement Standards Laboratory where I work
and the research we do in quantum electrical standards and I am happy to do
so one on one.
One area you may not have heard so much about is acoustics. Mark Poletti is
the inventor of the Variable Room Acoustics System that has been licensed to
Meyer Sound in the US. This system allows you to tune the reverberation
time of a room to suit singers, public speaking, or orchestras by using sets of
microphones and speakers and a computerized digital processing system that
connects the two. The computer in essence creates a virtual room that is
mathematically coupled to the real room and the clever maths allows this
coupling with the virtual room to modify the reverberation time of the real
room. Recently IRL passed its million dollar licensing fee milestone for this
technology. Now Mark is interested in 3D sound systems that allows you to
make a sound appear to come from any direction. So imagine yourself sitting
in front of a small linear array of speakers with your eyes closed. You hear a
bird singing in a tree behind you or someone moving a box of matches around
your head while shaking them. Believe me that is a cool experience and
much more impressive than the hearing the car moving in front of you from the
3

4. right-hand speaker to the left-hand speaker of your stereo system.
3

5. Here you see Steve Tallon working on a supercritical extraction system.
Do you know how caffeine can be removed from coffee in a safe way?
Non-safe methods that have been used in the past include benzene but
supercritical extraction using CO2 is much better. You place the beans
in fluid CO2 at 73 to 300 bar and overtime the caffeine gets
preferentially dissolved from the beans. You reduce the pressure and
the CO2 evaporates. The beans are then free of caffeine and the CO 2
which can be recycled for reuse. This technique can be used to
selectively isolate specific chemicals for example, for removing lipids
from fish waste such as the cod heads shown. IRL has created a
SUPEREX pilot scale supercritical extraction plant housed in a
container so that NZ companies can evaluate the technology in their
production processes. By this means industry can move from a
laboratory test tube scale process to a larger production scale one.
4

6. IRL covers a wide range of science and technology areas and has
commercialised some of this. Our website www.irl.cri.nz will give you
much more detail.
5

7. IRL staff have been involved in science education for many years. For
example, Chris Sutton has been a judge for the NIWA Wellington
Science Fair for many years. Geoff Willmott and others at IRL has
been involved in the IPENZ FutureIntech Ambassador schemes visiting
schools. Annette and I setup the Science Focus Club last year which
on Thursday afternoons tutors Year 13 students from local high schools
in physics, maths and stats. But our CEO, Shaun Coffey asked Annette
and I what we thought IRL could add to these activities and our
proposal included buying scientific instruments and sending them free
of charge around schools. We want to pick your brains on whether this
might be useful and what would be good choices for these instruments.
6

8. Now the cheapest thing we could send around is the science
experiment that Annette will pass out at the end. It doesn’t have the
same appeal as the sweets experiment Elizabeth did yesterday but it
doesn’t damage your teeth either. And hopefully it might give kids a
smart and informed answer for why they can’t stop their parents hearing
the bass. Mark Poletti our acoustics scientist showed me how paper
can be shown to reflect the sound but to be fair to him I should say that
I wrote this A4 Physics handout over the weekend and he hasn’t seen it
yet. So your homework is to check the physics and to make it more
accessible to senior physics students. Once I looked at what was
happening with sound transmission through partitions I found that it got
complicated quickly. I won’t dwell on the physics but it shows that IRL
can engage with your students in various ways. We would provide
cheap equipment (an A4 sheet of paper) but knowledgeable experts.
But I want to talk though mainly about IRL buying expensive equipment
and sending it to your schools free of charge accompanied by teaching
material, video, worksheets,…, whatever. We need your help with
choosing this equipment. What would work for you? I have a couple of
suggestions that might get your minds thinking.
7

9. What about a thermal imaging camera. Peter Saunders, one of my
colleagues, recently wrote the book “Radiation Thermometery” which is
available from Amazon. These cameras are fascinating and fun. They
can show that clouds are very cold, or explain why grass gets so brown
in summer when deprived of water. How does it fit into the curriculum?
Does it need to?
8

10. What about sending a 3D sound imaging system around? What
science experiments could you do with this?
9

11. A final thought. The Young Enterprise Scheme is a great way to give
school kids the experience of setting up and running a business. But
wouldn’t it be great if the scientific and technology innovation content of
this scheme could be beefed-up? Is this unrealistic? Would it make a
difference to have IRL involved in a technology coaching/mentoring
role?
10

12. Annette and I would welcome any comments, thoughts, or other ideas
you have. We are not teachers but we are keen to help show
something of IRL’s science and technology to your students. We can
be contacted at
Annette: A.Koo@irl.cri.nz, (04) 931 3739
Laurie: L.Christian@irl.cri.nz (04) 931 3110
Or if you want to know more about IRL, visit www.irl.cri.nz.
11

13. 12