How the First World War, that began in 1914, put the world’s chemists to work making chemicals to harm as well as heal though overall with horrific outcomes. The author of two books about the First World War, Dr Michael Freemantle will remind us that Ch

With many different types of guitars, we find out how much more is involved in the sound we get from various models, and whether or not this impacts on the price. Are we just paying for a brand name or the association with a particular musician? Today’s

What happens when wheat leaves the farm? We take up the story after the August crop harvest and speak with Dr Andrew Wingate who tells who tells how CAMGRAIN deliver quality assured wheat. Ideas featured in this show: How wheat is tested and cleaned; The

A podcast about extracting underground gas using fracking now that the government has issued licences to drill in the UK. We peek at the USA's experience where 95% of oil and gas wells are already hydraulically fractured. The grain of shale rock is so fi

This podcast focuses on the science of food crops. The growing world population leads to a demand to farm the land several times more effectively than we used to. But growing crops comes with risks. The farmer wants more of a guarantee that their efforts

Peter Barham, a professor of 'Molecular Gastronomy' talks about what his delicious subject entails. Professor Barham has worked with restaurant chefs including Heston Blumenthal of the celebrated “Fat Duck” restaurant in Berkshire. With the TOUR DE FR

About measuring the properties of materials that are not just solids or liquids or gases but are all three in one. The soil under your feet is one such material - it is of course a solid with air and water mixed in. Knowing how soil behaves is especially

Asking someone to send you an “engineer” will conjure up all sorts of people who build and fix things. But today’s show is about civil engineers. Professor Robert Mair of the University of Cambridge Engineering Department will explain what are they

This week we find out about aerodynamics and what it involves. We meet Professor Holger Babinsky at Cambridge University Engineering Department. He talks about wind tunnels and the need for bumps on aeroplane wings.

Can we believe that the climate will change in the long term, when we can’t even predict tomorrow’s weather? Our guest Tim Palmer is a Professor in Climate Physics at the University of Oxford, and President of the Royal Meteorological Society. In this