Private Passions

The physicist and broadcaster Helen Czerski talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music, inspired by her Polish heritage and her fascination with technology and exploration. Having gained a wonderfully titled PhD in Experimental and Explosive Physics from Cambridge in 2006, Helen worked in the US and Canada, and is now a Research Fellow at University College London where she specialises in the relationship between waves, weather and climate.But apart from her academic research and teaching she has another mission - to make physics accessible to us all. She does this by exploring the connections between the way the world works and our everyday experiences - for example weather patterns can be seen in microcosm when you stir milk into your tea. Hence the title of her highly successful book - Storm in a Teacup.She writes regularly for the Guardian, and has made numerous radio and television programmes about colour, bubbles, the sun, the weather - and the science behind sound and music. Her latest is a th