Week 1: Summer Placement

This week, I started my placement with Professor Roland Smith in the Plasma Physics Department at Imperial College. Professor Smith, is the head of the Plasma Group at Imperial College and has allowed me to work with him on an amazing Outreach project funded by the Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) Network grant. The IFE Network propose to increase the collaboration between fusion research groups and communicate the work being done with the public through Outreach activities. As part of my placement I shall be building another pop-o-matic, a balloon-popping laser that has featured in some of my previous posts. I got the privilege of demonstrating the pop-o-matic at the Imperial Festival and the visitors loved it! It has also been featured on BBC Breakfast, the Royal Society and at the Royal Institution.

Day 1

I met the research group managed by Professor Smith in a group meeting. It was odd, firstly because I was the youngest but secondly because I was the only girl - this is what I fight to change through Outreach events that I participate in and the weekly Science Club that I run at my old school. But it was great at the same time because the researchers were super friendly and it was nice to have an insight into what everyone was working on - most of the terminology was new to me, but hopefully I'll learn it soon enough. I had met a few of the researchers from my placement with the Plasma Group last year (see one of my previous blog posts for more about my work last year) so I felt quite at ease on the first day when I saw familiar faces.

Day 2 - Visit  Tokamak Energy
This was one of the BEST experiences I've ever had! I had the privilege of seeing the amazing tokamaks at Tokamak Energy and met the incredible brains behind their advancements! The labs were so much more hi-tech than I thought and the machines were just works of art! Here are some pictures for you to enjoy:

All images above are courtesy of Tokamak Energy. 

See the previous blog post for further information about Tokamak Energy and check out their website here.

Not only did I get to see some tokamak's but I also got to see the stand that shall be displayed at the Royal Society next week! Please do come along and visit Tokamak Energy at the Royal Society next week - you'll be able to control a real experiment that is based in Milton Park, Didcot which will look like this:

Stand that shall be displayed at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition next week - I LOVE it!

You'll also be able to meet the amazing people behind Tokamak Energy, have a magnet race and lots more! While I was there I was trained to explain fusion and the work of Tokamak Energy to the public - I'm so excited to share my enthusiasm for fusion and Tokamak Energy with you next week - hope to see you there!

Some pictures as well as a video of my wonderful journey to Tokamak Energy:

Didcot Parkway Station

Didcot Parkway Station

Didcot Parkway Station

Day 3 - Science Club
After attending an event organised by the Institute of Physics (IOP) at Imperial College, I ran my Science Club. The IOP event focussed on getting us into teaching - it was nice to communicate with real teachers and members of the IOP. Teaching can be a very rewarding career as you have such an influence on young lives - I would love to act as a female role model of physics for the younger generation in the hope to increase the number of females in Physics.

Gummy worms and huge bubbles were the main experiments carried out in the Science Club. The gummy worms are made using sodium alginate and calcium chloride. Sodium alginate can be found in seaweed and even used as a thickening agent in ice-cream! It is quite a gloopy substance and has a yellowy colour. It is a polymer which can be cross-linked to make longer chains with the addition of calcium chloride - thus, when the sodium alginate is pippeted into a beaker of calcium chloride the calcium acts as a cross link that joins the chains of the sodium alginate to make 'gummy worms'! It's a very fun experiment that shows cross-linking instantly. 

The Imperial College Open Day was also today, here are some pictures I took in passing:

The huge bubbles demo was influenced by a man I saw making huge bubbles outside the Science Museum near my university and I wanted to recreate it. So, I did with an old t-shirt - you cut the hem of the t-shirt and then tie it to some poles just like this in a sort of smiley mouth shape:

Then just get a bucket, put some bubble solution (or just washing up liquid and water - and if you have some glycerol add that too to make a stronger bubble) in it and use your make-shift huge-bubble maker in it and try and make some HUGE bubbles! I would recommend doing this outside as it can get quite messy!

Happy science-ing! :) 


Day 4 - Laser training
I completed an online Laser Safety Training Course that ended with a short test. I learnt so many new things - particularly how lasers can cause serious damage to your eyes. There are different classes of laser:

Class 1 - eye safe
Class 2 - can cause minor injury to eyes
Class 3 - will causemajor injury to eyes but diffuse reflections (reflections of the laser from rough surfaces like walls) won't necessarily cause injury if at a certain distance and not viewing it for a long time.
Class 4 - can start a fire and would burn out your retina for sure! Even diffuse reflections cause injury.

But as a safety precaution for those of you, who have bought a laser pointer online or are going to buy one the please be careful with them. I have heard of many horrible encounters with laser pointers bought online which were much more intense than what was displayed online. Numerous people have suffered from terrible eye injuries as a result of this - so please be aware of the consequences that can occur from buying laser pointers online.

Those of you who came to the Imperial Festival back in May, may have seen the cool demos I showed with laser pointers - you can show total internal reflection at home, see my previous blog post here for this and more.



Day 5 - Meeting with Prof. Smith
After a meeting with Professor Smith I was given a briefing on what I would be up to in the next eight weeks, this included designing and improving a new pop-o-matic (a balloon-popping laser) which shall be used in future Outreach events.

We want to add strength to the perspex casing in order to prevent any breakages when it is transported. Ideas were also bounced between myself and Nick Dover, the creator of the first pop-o-matic. We thought about:
- adding handles to make it easier to transport
- making two version: a smaller one and a larger one (so that the smaller one could be transported on the tube)
- adding hinges to the bottom and top lids
- adding an aluminium rim to the bottom and top of the cylinder for added strength
- creating a slit for the insertion of the balloon which does not go all the way to the end (as displayed in my drawing below)
- maybe making the system into two parts so that the optics are easily cleaned and do not get dirty from nebulisers or balloons
- maybe add a window so that the optics are easy to reach for cleaning
- make the system more compact by cutting out the need for a collimator

Sketch from my supervisor

My sketch of improvements that may be made to pop-o-matic

Here is the current pop-o-matic

These are just ideas for the minute and so I do expect to face some engineering challenges but I am excited to get started! The end result is in the above image and this is what I am aiming for but slightly modified for ease of transport and use. 

It's been a great week overall and am looking forward to showcasing the amazing work of Tokamak Energy next week at the Royal Society Summer Science Exihibition - hope to see you there!

Tokamak Energy: Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

Tokamak Energy, a private company that aims to accelerate the development of fusion energy by concentrating on new technologies and smaller machines, will be exhibiting at the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition. The Summer Science Exhibition is the UK's most prestigious science exhibition and shall host around 25 exhibitions, including Tokamak Energy. 

If you are on Twitter you can follow the Royal Society (@royalsociety) and use the hashtag #SummerScience for any tweets related to the Summer Science Exhibition. You can also follow Tokamak Energy (@TokamakEnergy) and use the hashtag #FasterFusion for any tweets related to their stand at the Summer Science Exhibtion.

But why am I talking about this? Well, firstly, I visited the Summer Science Exhibition last year and it was one of the BEST science events I have ever attended! And I would like you all to experience it too. The sheer quality of the stands and the exhibitors was incredible and I have never had such a steep learning curve - so many wonderful things to learn and see! Here are a few highlights of last year's event:

Playing a game with just 'brainwaves'!

Ultrasound

Clever wing of an aircraft

Royal Society

Fusion research at Imperial College

Exotic fish

Jellyfish

Dinosaur

Camera that video the 'movement' of light

Lenses

Blue ring: electrons being bent by a magnetic field

Secondly, I shall be sharing the amazing work of Tokamak Energy with the public and schools at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition next week! This is all courtesy of the wonderful Dr. Melanie Windridge who has given me this incredible opportunity, for which I am ever so grateful.

As a small teaser, Tokamak Energy are finding a faster way to fusion. Fusion is a nuclear process that is opposite to fission where light nuclei fuse to form helium. This is a very safe process and is carbon emission free, making it the ideal process for energy production. Fusion occurs in nature, inside the very thing that helps to give us life, the Sun. On Earth we can recreate the conditions within the Sun inside a tokamak (or magnetic bottle). A tokamak is a doughnut-shaped magnetic trap for fusion plasmas, where tokamak is a Russian acronym that stands for 'toroidal chamber magnetic coils'. By harnessing this process on Earth we can have clean, efficient energy production - the dream which shall soon become reality! But the big money question is how soon - find out more at our stand at the Royal Society from the 29th of June to the 5th of July, more details here. We hope to see you there!

1965 Imperial Alumni

Today in Blackett, home to the Physics Department at Imperial College, an alumni event was held where students who graduated in 1965 attended. One of the special guests was Sir Tom Kibble, a British theoretical physicist and senior investigator at Imperial College. His research interests are weighing the field of quantum field theory where he works on symmetry breaking, phase transitions and topological defects. Kibble is most famous for his co-discovery of the Higgs mechanism and the Higgs boson but fell short of a Nobel Prize which would have been shared with Peter Higgs.

You can find out more about Kibble here and Higgs here.

Alongside, Jess Wade, a third year PhD student in the Experimental Solid State Group at Imperial; Felicity McGrath, a final year PhD student who has just submitted her thesis and worked in the Quantum Optics and Laser Science Group at Imperial; and Jon Wood, a third year PhD student in the Plasma Physics Group, I escorted the alumni to various labs for their tours. The labs included the Main Workshop managed by Paul Brown, MAGPIE Z-Pinch and Cerberus (UK's largest University based laser system) where the head of the Plasma Physics Department, Professor Roland Smith leads these experiments (and Professor Sergey Lebedev also helped with the tours) and finally Professor Lesley Cohen's Solid State and Magnetism related lab. The Main Workshop is a suite of machines that underpin and enable the world leading research associated with the Department. MAGPIE Z-Pinch consists of 1.4 million amp, the largest open-access machine of it's kind in the world and Cerberus, as aforementioned is the UK's largest University based laser system. Within Professor Cohen's lab, the temperatures drop down to 2 K (-271 °C!) or up to 800°C! and magnetic fields up to 9 Tesla (where the Earth's magnetic field is only 25 µT!). Here, they explore new materials for energy efficient refrigeration and nanostructured magnets that capture magnetic monopole defects. 

All in all, it was a great day and it was an absolute honour to meet the incredible people who were once students of Imperial just like myself - and the lecture theatre I sat in was the exact same (no refurbishments) as the one they sat in! This made me reminisce about my old school and how I helped to set up FutureFirst (as mentioned in a previous blog post), an alumni network at my old school which shall benefit the current students by allowing them to see where the students who went to their school ended up; acting as a form of inspiration for them to go on and do great things. I hope other undergraduates like myself and anyone for that matter may find a moment to visit their old school or university and share their experiences in order to inspire the next generation.

In the background getting ready for the event

Great welcome talk by the Head of the Physics Department at Imperial College, Jordan Nash

A quick tour of the Main Worshop

Having fun learning more about Lesley Cohen's amazing lab!

Exciting laser Physics with Professor Smith!

Find out more about the Imperial Physics Alumni event here. 

Another event that occured today was the Summer Ball for undergraduates - here are some pictures of the Summer Ball preparations to enjoy. 

Queen's Tower - apparently Dumbledore died here, at the very top

Queen's Tower, with a rather absurd fake man climbing down it!

Ferris wheel

Ferris wheel on South Kensington Campus