Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) is offering a revolutionary new treatment option for a range of diseases, particularly cancers. By combining the skills of physicists and physicians, PDT uses light to kill ...

Nature is full of remarkable mathematical patterns and clever designs, and honeybees are some of nature's most impressive engineers. Inside a hive, bees build honeycomb structures made from thousands ...

When ChatGPT-3 crash-landed onto our computers in November 2022, you’d have been forgiven for thinking this massive leap in artificial intelligence had sprung out of nowhere. From one day to the next, ...

The mining and engineering industries in the 19th century relied heavily on gunpowder as an explosive to aid their work. However, storing and transporting gunpowder on wooden sailing ships was ...

On 18 May 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall wrote in his journal ‘the subject is completely in my hands’. This is no cryptic note. Just nine days earlier he had set up his complex and clever new ...

As we celebrate the bicentenary of Faraday's invention of the electric motor in 1821, our Head of Heritage and Collections, Charlotte New, takes us on a voyage through time to rediscover this ...

You know the story. Two strangers locked eyes across a crowded room, and there it is: butterflies in the stomach, sparks in the air—they know they’ve found “the one”. Love at first sight is a popular ...

Humphry Davy was a chemist and the first Director of the Laboratory here at the Royal Institution, taking up the post in 1801. He was central to establishing the Ri as both a popular venue for ...

Space exploration gave us more than Moon rocks; it delivered life-changing products we now take for granted. Explore the biggest terrestrial impacts of research initially designed for zero gravity.

How can physics help us with baby carrying? When lifting an object, we know that work done (amount of energy transferred to an object) is equal to the force it takes to lift the object, multiplied by ...

November 30th 2022 is a date permanently etched into the history books. For those unaware of its significance, this was when OpenAI released to the public their free-to-use, large language model ...

Volunteer historian Laurence Scales explores how war surgeons operated 25 years before antibiotics were widely available, starting from a 1915 Discourse here at the Ri. Antibiotics would not be ...