Question: why did you choose baterys and how old were you when you knew that you want to do that?

Louise Mc Grath answered on 9 Nov 2016:

Hi 438newg38!

Great question! Well when I was in secondary school I did chemistry, and found it fascinating, so I used to look through the book to see what we were going to learn. There was an electrochemistry chapter in the book and I was really excited to try it but the teacher chose not to study that topic. I was quite upset… Fast forward to 3rd year in college and we started learning about electrochemistry, then in 4th year I carried out a project in electrochemistry. It was then I fell in love..

I was then offered an internship doing more electrochemistry, and from there I decided that carrying out a PhD in batteries would be a good thing for me to do! So I was only 23/24 years old when I decided to work with batteries.

The reason I chose to work with batteries is because I had already worked in analysing solutions, and plating materials such as Copper (something kind of like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnJ0V7B7nKo) and so decided to try something different. Having lots of skills in electrochemistry allows you to work in lots of different areas!

Just in case you’re not sure what electrochemistry is… Electrochemistry is the branch of chemistry that deals with producing chemical reactions with electricity and in the cases of batteries: the production of electricity by chemical reactions.