1

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

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

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

3

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 CO2

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

IRL covers a wide range of science and technology areas and has

commercialised some of the IP generated. Our website www.irl.cri.nz

will give you much more detail.

5

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

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

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

What about sending a 3D sound imaging system around? What

science experiments could you do with this?

9

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

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

12