• Question: do you use glue for anything?

    Asked by teed499neb on 2 Feb 2024.
    • Photo: Alexander De Bruin

      Alexander De Bruin answered on 2 Feb 2024:


      yes, glue is used in our products to stick various layers together to stop gases leaking out

    • Photo: Rachel Edwards

      Rachel Edwards answered on 2 Feb 2024:


      All the time! We make a lot of our own equipment, so we might use glue to seal some electronics, or to stick pieces together. We’re looking at some craft glue at the moment – it comes on a roll a bit like sellotape but it’s sticky on both sides and can be used over and over again. If it’s the right amount of stretchy, we might be able to use it in our sensors that measure how sound is absorbed – the sound energy then turns into heat energy and we can see that using special materials or cameras.

    • Photo: Sharron Kenny

      Sharron Kenny answered on 2 Feb 2024:


      yes to glue the labels into my samples so i can identify them throughout the analysis process

    • Photo: Sarah-Jane Potts

      Sarah-Jane Potts answered on 2 Feb 2024:


      Not in my printed solar panels, unless something has gone very wrong and they need fixing quickly. I do use it for making minature energy generating swings and see saws though to keep the bearings in place.

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 2 Feb 2024:


      We sometimes use adhesives but because we work at very low presssures they are designed not to emit gas… So we sometimes use ceramic adhesives that form inorganic solids when dry.

    • Photo: Tina-Jaine Haigh

      Tina-Jaine Haigh answered on 2 Feb 2024:


      In my personal life, yes. I use glue for mending household things, or for crafts. I have never used glue at work as the things I deal with need to be much stronger, and glue can’t cope with the kind of conditions you might find in a nuclear plant – very high pressures and temperatures.

    • Photo: Chigozie Onuba

      Chigozie Onuba answered on 4 Feb 2024:


      yes if I have some things to repair at home that might require a glue.

    • Photo: David Bremner

      David Bremner answered on 5 Feb 2024:


      I don’t use glue but i do use silicone sealant for the vials that i put my fridge/freezer thermometer probes into, it stops the glycerol from leaking out.

    • Photo: Michael Schubert

      Michael Schubert answered on 5 Feb 2024:


      Definitely! I use it to prepare some of the materials that I analyze on a very big, expensive specialist microscope called an electron microscope. I need a specific type of glue, so I can’t just pour it out of a bottle from the shop; I have to dissolve sticky tape in a special chemical to get the glue off it!

    • Photo: Mark Eyles

      Mark Eyles answered on 5 Feb 2024:


      In my company we make glue and use glue. Glues or adhesives are a very important engineering material.

    • Photo: Bruno Silvester Lopes

      Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 5 Feb 2024:


      to seal envelopes, create crafts 🙂

    • Photo: Alessio Spampinato

      Alessio Spampinato answered on 6 Feb 2024:


      Yes, I do. Sometime, I use a special glue to fix components in a vacuum chamber (no air in it, like in space). The glue has to be “special” because no gas has to escape from it, otherwise the vacuum would not be very good.

    • Photo: Kirsty Lindsay

      Kirsty Lindsay answered on 6 Feb 2024:


      We tend to build big bits of equipment that holds people, so it is mostly bolted together rather than glued

    • Photo: Georgia Lambert

      Georgia Lambert answered on 6 Feb 2024:


      I don’t but another person in the lab I work in is interested in beetle flight and they made a flightmill (like a treadmill in a gym but for flying and miniature for beetles) and they use glue to gently attach the beetles to the flightmill to measure how fast they go!

    • Photo: Lydia Eeles

      Lydia Eeles answered on 6 Feb 2024:


      Our company still works with paper log books, this means that we use glue every day to stick in templates in order to record our experiments

    • Photo: Lisa Humphreys

      Lisa Humphreys answered on 7 Feb 2024:


      We use adhesives with our energetic materials to secure them in place. Very important as a safety factor to minimise impact of vibration through transport.

    • Photo: Kirsty Ross

      Kirsty Ross answered on 19 Feb 2024:


      Mostly round the house at the moment, as I am fixing things before we sell the house. Glues come in handy in lots of different places. I’m having “fun” at the moment using a special liquid to remove the glue left by stickers all over our furniture!

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