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Upon reaching our third age in active retirement people often have some extra free time and the University of the Third Age (U3A) has been working with UNSW to produce a range of courses for the life long learners in this group. This year our superstar Scarlet Kong produced and delivered a U3A workshop based in Materials Science and Engineering starting in the concepts of polycrystallinity before talking about materials testing and then demonstrating a range of bending tests.
Above: Scarlet delivers a workshop on shape memory alloys and stents.
The pandemic unfortunately prevented Scarlet from delivering the presentations in person however she was still able to run an online session remotely. Around 30 participants tuned in to her presentation and had some interesting follow up questions about smart materials and materials of the future. We look forward to participating in more of these workshops in the future!
Above: A slide from the presentation discussing software that can simulate bending tests.