Former presidents of the Institute of Wood Science (IWSc) Jim Coulson and Dr Richard Murphy have discussed the latest timber technology on BBC Radio 4’s Material World programme.
The 15-minute live discussion with presenter Quentin Cooper was organised as a result of an e-mail from Mr Coulson, a regular listener of Material World, to the programme’s producer.
Mr Coulson said it seemed appropriate to have a radio discussion focusing on wood, as it was the IWSc’s 50th anniversary this year.
He said: “We talked about many applications of wood and that it’s a modern material for a modern world, not just something which carpenters use to make dovetail joints, which they have been doing for hundreds of years.”
The discussion touched on heat treatment, the use of microwave technology by the University of Melbourne to make timber easier to treat and the advent of composite products such as LVL and I-beams.
Mr Coulson, a speaker at the IWSc’s Jubilee Conference in London on November 3, said the programme had helped to raise the profile of the IWSc.
