a day in the life... Nikki Woolmore
PHD Student in Ballistics, Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, Wiltshire
Featuring: Jenny Honeybill (14) and Henry Jupp-Curtis (14)
10.00
It was great to meet Nikki - she's an extremely cool person and not at all what we expected! Her job/study is to work towards a PhD (so she'll be Dr Woolmore) and her PhD title is An Investigation into the Fragmentation Phenomena of Tungsten Carbide Armour Piercing Projectiles (bullets) into Ceramic Faced Armour. We started off the day in TOP SECRET! style. Nikki took us to the College Armoury. Wish we could show you pictures of that but no cameras allowed! It is a collection of all the guns and weapons there's ever been.
11.00
Then a walk over the campus where we came across 'Nikki's car. Very impressed with this especially as she had done loads of work on it herself to soup it up. After that, sorry folks, more TOP SECRET stuff, as Nikki took us to one of the indoor firing ranges to see commercial testing of bullet proof jackets.
11.45
Then here we in the range Nikki uses to test her particular bullet, the BS 41 14.5mm Armour Piercing Projectile. She has her own rig that she fires the 14.5mm projectile at, and the different materials she tests its impact on are fixed in place in the middle of the rig.
She has tested steel of different thicknesses, various ceramics, and composites of all sorts.
You don't stand in the range when the bullets are flying (obviously!) but here we are at the end of it as Nikki explains exactly how bullets maim and kill people and destroy tanks to us. Scary and gruesome. You get a view of firings from inside the safety of the viewing room at the end of the range.
12.45
After this we went back to Nikki's office. It's a corner of a big open plan room where lots of other PhD students also work. A lot of what Nikki does is analysing her data and she can do this using modelling programmes on her computer. If you look closely you'll see a bullet shape just about to impact on a surface. She also has to make posters and give talks to explain the results of her work to people at the Ministry of Defence.
13.15
Then off to the pub in the nearby village of Shrivenham. We suspected that she's no stranger to the pub, as the landlord was obviously an old friend - here he is waving out of the window! Lunch was gorgeous and we were joined by Steve Champion who is Nikki's rallying partner. Not only does she work hard, she plays hard too. Rally car driving AND playing bass guitar in a band.
14.15
After lunch we had a look round the tank shed - some awesomely big tanks in there! The best thing was we could climb on and into most of them to get a really good look. Nikki showed us some tank thickness metal that had been test fired at.
This is the result - and the metal was 150mm thick. The soldiers inside this tank would have died from the shock waves in the tank even though the missile didn't get through. This is the inside of the 'tank'.
That's what her work is all about.
The sand coloured things that look like bricks on the outside of the tank is reactive explosive armour. Next door to the tank shed Nikki took us to see her rally car up on ramps for a bit of TLC from Steve.
Before we went home Nikki took us back to her office again to show us some of the things she tests the weapon on.
We were really impressed that some of these small chunks of material were worth a fortune! This little piece of Titanium Boride is worth £3000!! "Here's one I blew up earlier..." We had a great day – Nikki has an amazing job. It really made us think about all the different and weird things you can end up doing if you set out to be a scientist.
To find out more about Nikki visit the www.noisenet.ws site.
Guns & Weapons
The military scientists and technologists can study their design and mechanisms, and police can study them for forensics to do with gun crime.
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Bullet Proof Jackets
The bullets fly so fast you can't see them but they are very noisy! And you can see where they thud into the body armour, and the impact behind in the test clay block. Gripping stuff!
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Safety
And just as well, Nikki told us about her last firing tests where shards of metal flew all the way back and hit the viewing window. You have to be very safety conscious if you blow things up for a living!
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Reactive Explosive Armour
Nikki told us that behind each of these little panels on this tank would be placed explosive, so the panel would be able to fly off and divert an incoming missile - amazing eh!
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Rally Car
They take part in road rallies which happen (legally!) on country road routes during the night - so no speeding or dangerous driving allowed. Still sounds brilliant fun though. Nikki is the driver and Steve navigates.
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