Growing Magnets

Inspiration

We were inspired by the presentation gave to introduce us to the projects. We are PhD students who work with recycling plastics and therefore sustainability is always at the forefront of our minds. We began by researching what are the key challenges with organisations believe that space can solve, such as forming more consistent crystal structures, and were particularly interested with using our skills with molecular biology

What it does

We created a system to grow magnets using common iron materials found on earth instead of using the rare earth materials currently used to create permanent magnets.

How we built it

We brainstormed how we could use acoustics to create environments in which biology could facilitate the formation of these crystals.

Challenges we ran into

We are not particularly versed in physics, thus ensuring that our system was technically feasible required us to learn and revisit equations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our system is complete and theoretically with a small amount more work could be constructed and tested here on earth.

What we learned

We learned about metal crystallisation, microgravity, magnets, acoustics and more!

What's next for Growing Magnets

We would like to refine our models and test the feasibility of creating our de novio proteins and DNA origami structure in real life, as well as further refining our design.