Imperial Open Day

The Imperial Open Day was held on the 19th of September where prospective students got the chance to look around Imperial, talk to current students, see different departments and learn more about the courses they want to apply for. I was lucky enough to be a part of this. I helped out with the Physics Department where I displayed a small demo for visitors who were waiting for a departmental tour or waiting to go in the lecture theatre for a talk.

Physics Department

The demo was measuring the speed of light with cheese and a microwave! A microwave works in the following way.

1 Inside the microwave there is an object called a magnetron which produces microwaves.

2 The microwaves are guided into the central chamber and bounce around creating standing waves - which is a wave that does not propagate but wiggles in some places and doesn't in others, giving hot spots and cold spots inside the microwave, respectively. This is why you need the rotating table in the microwave so that the food is evenly heated.

3 The microwaves pass through the food and cause the water molecules to vibrate more. The more they vibrate the hotter the food. 

In the demo the rotating plate was removed and a layer of cheese is placed in the bottom of the food chamber of the microwave. When you put the microwave on, let the cheese heat up and then take out the cheese you notice the hotspots! Some parts of the cheese has melted and others haven't which supports the idea of standing waves being produced inside the microwave.

The distance between two hotspots is half a wavelength. By measuring this distance we can get the wavelength by multiplying this by 2. The frequency of the microwaves is written on the back of the microwave. By taking the product of the wavelength and the frequency you can hopefully get the speed of light!

My stand at the Open Day - a microwave, cheese, calculator and a ruler is all you need!

You can see hotspots!

Frequency is written on the back of the microwave (apologies for the blurry picture)

It was a nice demo to use at the Open Day and attracted a lot of students, this was all courts of the amazing Outreach Officer, Dr. Simon Foster. He is an absolute legend and is my go-to-person whenever I have a question related to Outreach. He thought of the idea and added a competitive edge to the demo by offering a prize to the person who came closest to the value of the speed of light. Thank you Simon!

It was nice to have a physics audience who knew what standing waves were and could appreciate the simplicity of the experiment and the fact that they could recreate it at home! They were all eager to have a go and the students who won the books had huge smiles on their faces - an irreplaceable feeling to see such huge smiles! All because of lovely Dr. Foster!

In addition to the demo I also got a chance to spread some wise words about interviews, personal statements and also my love for Physics at Imperial! All in all it was a great day and I was so happy to offer some advice to the younger students about getting into uni. I wish all the freshers the very best of luck for the UCAS process and hope to see you at Imperial in the coming year!

Another demo that was displayed - laser shined onto fluid with paramecium (micro-creatures) - you can see the creatures moving!

Art work that captivates some very nice physics - this is the artwork seen normally.

Through a polariser you see the artwork with a pop of colour! So COOL!

Such a beautiful day #SummerIsNotOver

I took a small detour on my way home to the Science Museum and saw some cool things in the Materials exhibition. Cosmonauts, a new exhibition at the Science Museum was finally open but I didn't get a chance to see it - but it looks so cool and I definitely want to go sometime soon! Find out more info here. 

Artistic piece in Materials section of the Science Museum

Sun, sun, sun!