Question: What made you want to become a sciencist?

Mark Hill answered on 11 Mar 2011:

Hello Chloe,

Put simply, finding out the answers to everyday problems. More specifically, I now reconstruct serious and fatal collisions, to determine what went wrong and how it may be prevented in the future.

Another important function of my work, where someone has died, is to tell their version of events, from the physical and forensic evidence. After all, they can’t.

For example,I have been to a collision where a teenage lad was thrown from a vehicle, because he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. His ‘mates’ said that he was driving, but he could hardly defend himself and argue the point.

If he wasn’t driving, then one of his so-called mates would have got away unpunished for poor driving. Using forensics, especially fibre/plastic fusion, where clothing fibres embedded into the plastic dashboard of the car, we were able to show that the teenager that died was a front seat passenger and that one of his ‘mates was lying. That ‘mate’ was subsequently found guilty at court. This is not only important for justice, but extremely important for the family of the lad who died.

Fibre/plastic fusion occurs in high energy collisions, not necessarily high speed collisions. In this instance, it was when the occupants hit the inside of the car. The heat energy momentarily melted the plastic and cooled just as quickly. In that split second, clothing fibres became trapped in the melted plastic and were then held there when the occupants separated from the plastic. All it needs is a microscope, or, sometimes, a torch and Sherlock Holmes style magnifying glass!

Science is all about finding answers and sometimes about finding questions before answers. That sounds somewhat deep and philosophical, but that is what scientific research is all about.

Last year, for a masters degree, I conducted research to see if people drive differently when in cars that have certain safety features, such as driving closer to other vehicles because they have anti-lock brakes fitted and, thus, believe that they can stop more quickly. They do, and they can’t, to answer the two questions in order. It is all under the heading of ‘risk homeostasis’.

It is answering questions through experiments and research that makes science and social science, so much fun.

Thank you for your question Chloe. Hopefully we have all inspired you to go into science later.

Mark.