Question: If you won , would you explore more into tendon disease and damage? What kind of equitment do you use?

Jenni Tilley answered on 11 Jun 2011:

Win or lose, I’ll keep on doing my research into tendon disease and damage – the work I do is already paid for (I’m essentially paid to be a student like a lot of graduate students in the UK), I wouldn’t need to use the prize money to pay for it. Instead I’d use the money to tell more people like you about my research and Materials Science in general.

In my experiments I use a lot of very different pieces of kit that Materials Scientists usually use to look at ‘engineering materials’ (metals, ceramics, plastics etc). An important machine that I use is called an Atomic Force Microscope. It scans a very sharp needle (about 100,000x sharper than a sewing needle) attached to a cantilever (mini diving board) across my surface of my sample. Forces between the tip and the atoms in my sample either attract the tip towards my sample, or repel it away (http://scienceinyoureyes.memphys.sdu.dk/atomarkraftmikroskopi_en.php). This bends the cantilever and, by measuring how much it bends I can work out how strong the force is. It produces some realy beautiful images, such as the one in my profile!