UC EVENTS

Please join us for our second CCCR seminar of 2020 presented by Julia Brand. Abstract: The Sydney Harbour Bridge will soon celebrate its 90th birthday with a major cleaning campaign. Professor Andrei Rode from the Australian National University gathered a team from the University of Sydney, the University of Technology of Sydney, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization and the University of Canberra, to collaborate with owner of the bridge Transport for New South Wales to develop new laser cleaning techniques that will be safer for the bridge, workers, and the environment. The goal is the removal of paint and corrosion from the steel arch, and the removal of dirt and staining from the granite-clad pylons. While the cleaning of the steel is driven by a functional purpose, cleaning the granite is mostly driven by aesthetics, which raises philosophical and practical questions about what has to be removed, how clean to make the pylons and how to assess if we have reached a ‘clean state’. Sciences and the humanities offer different answers to these questions, can we determine which one is right? This seminar is an exploration of these interesting questions, which remain open, and welcomes feedback and discussion to investigate the issues further.