• Question: How many people in the world get affected by your job?

    Asked by kat9812 to Steph, Mike, Matt, Dan, Ant on 14 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by wimmer45, danwoodell, nemosherlock1204.
    • Photo: Matt Maddock

      Matt Maddock answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      That’s tricky to answer.

      Specifically and directly by my job, perhaps a few hundred – those people who come to use the synchrotron where I work. However, if I wasn’t here to help the machine run, they couldn’t do their science – science which potentially affects everyone! Diamond – the machine I work on – is used to help design medicines, to make air-travel safer, to improve computing…all sorts! So many things, I can’t even begin to remember or understand them all.

      So – depending on how you look at it, the work I do affects pretty much everyone who takes medicines, or uses computers, or flies on an aeroplane, or…

    • Photo: Dan Veal

      Dan Veal answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Most of my projects it affects the few dozen people who either work with me or who I do the work for. But in 5 or 10 years it’s probably going to be hundreds or thousands, for example I’m now building a distance measuremetn system that uses laser beams tracked with cameras, so in a few years it may be commercialized in a small way so several systems will be sold and used in factories like Airbus to make airplanes, or assemble the wings, etc. I hope anyway!

    • Photo: Mike Salter

      Mike Salter answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Hmmm, it could be a lot! I’m currently working on a camera for the International Space Station, you’ll be able to log onto a website and watch up-to-date images of it flying over the world – and even see your own house! I reckon this could be quite popular – so maybe millions!!!!

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