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  • Rights: University of Waikato. All Rights Reserved.
    Published 5 October 2012 Referencing Hub media
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    Teenage ideas about future careers sometimes do not become reality. In this video clip, Professor Kate McGrath, Director of the MacDiarmid Institute, describes herself as a teenager who wanted to become a pilot and then a soil scientist1 who became a physical chemistry professor. These changes were the result of multiple influences.

    Transcript

    PROFESSOR KATE MCGRATH
    Most people when they think of chemists, they think that they synthesise2 new molecules3, so I don’t do that. So what a physical chemist4 does is they sit on the physics end of chemistry and what they’re trying to do is to understand the properties of materials from a chemical point of view.

    As a teenager, actually I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Being a pilot sounded really exciting to me when I was 15, so I had this grand plan of becoming an accounts clerk, because I was really good with numbers, and paying for myself to become a pilot. That didn’t happen obviously. When I was finishing high school, I really had no clue of what I wanted to do, and I was thinking – and again, I think typical of teenagers – I wanted to save the world. So then I was thinking, well being a pilot’s not going to save the world, being an accounts clerk’s not going to save the world, so I decided that I was going to become a soil scientist and I was going to save the world by feeding the world.

    So I went to university, and in fact, at that time, you couldn’t do soil engineering, but working with a few people, we came up with a way that maybe I could make something work. So I was enrolled in an engineering intermediate but I fell in love with chemistry, and that was all to do with one lecturer in first year – a guy called John Blunt – and he was amazing and he just made me see that by focusing on molecular functionality5 would allow you to actually understand so much.

    So in order to really understand systems, at some point, you have to get down to what chemicals6 are there, and that’s true of physics or biology7 or medical science or geology8. It doesn’t matter, you have to understand what chemicals you have in your system and what they’re doing. But I was still really good at numbers. Combining all of those things together meant becoming a physical chemist.

    Acknowledgements:
    Dr Jens Greinert, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
    National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)
    Dr Natasha Munro

    1. soil scientist: A scientist who studies soil, looking at a variety of aspects from the chemistry and form of soil to environmental protection and resource planning.
    2. synthesis: The production of chemical compounds. Often refers to the production in a laboratory or factory setting, i.e. being manufactured artificially under human control.
    3. molecule: Two or more atoms bonded together. The molecule of an element has all its atoms the same. The molecule of a compound has two or more different atoms.
    4. chemist: A scientist trained in the science of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties.
    5. functionality: A range of useful functions or capabilities.
    6. chemicals: Everything is made up of chemicals. All matter (anything made of atoms) can be called chemicals. They can be in any form – liquid, solid or gas. Chemicals can be a pure substance or a mixture.
    7. biology: The science of living things.
    8. geology: Study of the origin, history and structure of the Earth; the geological features of an area.
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      soil scientist

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    2. A scientist who studies soil, looking at a variety of aspects from the chemistry and form of soil to environmental protection and resource planning.

      chemist

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    4. A scientist trained in the science of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties.

      biology

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    6. The science of living things.

      synthesis

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    8. The production of chemical compounds. Often refers to the production in a laboratory or factory setting, i.e. being manufactured artificially under human control.

      functionality

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    10. A range of useful functions or capabilities.

      geology

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    12. Study of the origin, history and structure of the Earth; the geological features of an area.

      molecule

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    14. Two or more atoms bonded together. The molecule of an element has all its atoms the same. The molecule of a compound has two or more different atoms.

      chemicals

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    16. Everything is made up of chemicals. All matter (anything made of atoms) can be called chemicals. They can be in any form – liquid, solid or gas. Chemicals can be a pure substance or a mixture.