56 | New Scientist | 8 June 2019
The back pages Me and my telescope
Zoe Laughlin is co-founder and director
of the Institute of Making at University College
London, and loves staging her family’s
homemade Olympic gamesFirst up, do you have a telescope?
No, I’ve never owned one. This doesn’t
feel like the best start, in the context of this
article. I’ve owned quite a few microscopes
over the years if that’s any consolation.As a child, what did you
want to do when you grew up?
I can remember really clearly wanting
to be a pudding designer.Explain what you do
in one easy paragraph.
I’m an artist, designer and material engineer.
We collect wondrous materials, conduct
research into materials and stage events on
the art, science, craft and engineering of
materials, as well as running an open-access
workshop at UCL that I like to think of as a
dream garden shed.What do you love most about what you do,
and what’s the worst part?
Working with friends and having nobody’s
permission to ask but my own. The worst
part is saying no.What does a typical day involve?
There is probably no typical day, but a typical
element of every day is having lunch with the
team at the Institute of Making. This is something
we take time to do with as many of us around the
table can be there on that given day.Sum up your life in a one-sentence
elevator pitch...
An enthusiastic amateur gets carried away?
Or: making, as defined by the relationship
between materials and processes, explored,
celebrated and investigated in as many
ways as possible.Were you good at science at school?
I was keen, enjoyed the practical side and, on
the whole, found it interesting, but I wasn’t
one of the “good at science” crew.If you could send a message back to
yourself as a kid, what would you say?
Don’t put Smurfy in that box.If you could have a long conversation
with any scientist, living or dead, who
would it be?
I’d like to have a discussion with Richard
Feynman, though who wouldn’t! But I’d
want to bring up gender politics.Do you have an unusual hobby, and if so,
please will you tell us about it?
I like to stage informal “Olympic games”
at family get-togethers and festive occasions.
There is a summer garden Olympics and a
winter garden Olympics, and often an Easter
edition too. Favourite events include the
shopping-basket-slalom relay race, the five-bar-
gate challenge and the balled-up-sock-through-
an-upstairs-window lob.What’s the best piece of
advice anyone ever gave you?
Last month, I learned that Dolly Parton said
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
That strikes me as great advice.What’s the best thing you’ve read or seen
in the past 12 months?
42nd Street at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,
in London, three times.How useful will your skills
be after the apocalypse?
I’m definitely a practical person who can turn
their hand to all sorts of making and fixing. I can
whittle a mean spoon, light fires without matches
and make rope from stinging nettles, so I think I’d
do above average.OK, one last thing: tell us something
that will blow our minds...
While making a documentary about rubbish
and landfill, I learned that it takes a tonne of
ore to create just 1 gram of gold – the same
amount of the metal that can be retrieved
from just 40 smartphones. Plus, there are
now more smartphones and similarly
connected devices on Earth than
there are people. ❚“ It takes a
tonne of ore
to retrieve the
same amount
of gold as
there is in 40
smartphones”
STORMS MEDIA GROUP / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO