Week 8: Summer Placement

Day 1

The tube delays on the Piccadilly line made me half an hour late for the group meeting! :( I walked in and apologised and then listened to some great physics experiment collaboration. It seems like every week there is a new experiment going on - too cool! I then spoke to my supervisor about my CAD drawings for the housing of the popomatic and he said that he wanted to see my CAD drawings before I sent them to Atlas Plastics, a leading plastic fabricator, to get a quote. I had modelled the housing for the popomatic a month ago but realised that I did this on Windows and so wasn't compatible with the mac that I was now using. Thus, I had to recreate the CAD drawings which didn't take too long since it was a similar process to last time. By 3pm I was done with the CAD drawings and sent screenshots to my supervisor so that he could check that they were okay. After this I took a little food break and encountered my supervisor who had great news! Some of my orders had finally arrived - I was so excited - felt like Christmas came early. It was the first time I had ever received a package that was full of cool, shiny equipment.

After that, I took the equipment to the lab and unpackaged the stuff. One of the items that arrived were the Aluminium profiles/optical construction rails which needed to be cut. I asked the PhD student who was working in the same lab as me and he directed me to the Physics Department's Workshop. Since I only wanted the Aluminium profiles cut in half, the man in the workshop agreed to get the job done by tomorrow morning. So the PhD student helped me carry the rails to the workshop and I gave my email address to the workshop man and hopefully I'll have nicely cut Aluminium profiles by tomorrow morning! :)

Aluminium profile

                 

                 

Pink packaging!

T-nuts

Handles

Day 2

As soon as I arrived at university I went over to the workshop, collected the freshly cut aluminium rails and put them in the lab. I quickly realised that I needed end caps to protect anyone using the popomatic from getting hurt from the sharp edges of the rail so I emailed my supervisor with the appropriate order number and he ordered them for me.

I received an email from Atlas Plastics, the company from which I was going to order the plastic casing for the popomatic, regarding the fact that he could not open the CAD drawings because I was using AutoCAD 2015 and his version was 2000. So I re-saved my drawings in the version 2000 and re-sent them to him. He could then open them :) 

I went back into the lab after lunch and found that I could not attach the handles to the aluminium rail because the M6 (metric, 6 mm diameter) screws did notify through the holes in the handles. I went upstairs to the offices on level 7 and asked a PhD student about what I should do. She and another PhD student recommend that I drill larger holes - so the PhD student who was qualified to use the large electric drill drilled them for me. After this we went up to level 8 where the researchers I was working with treated me to some cake for passing my second year exams after a tough year going through an illness. It was lovely to see all the researchers in one place and we had some great chats and of course delicious cake! They were so friendly and I will definitely miss them when my placement comes to an end - thank you very much to all those in the Plasma Physics Group at Imperial College, you are all amazing!

After some quality cake I went down to the lab to find that the M6 screws couldn't fit in the handle despite the holes where the correct size - this time the head of the screw would get caught in the top half of the handle and so didn't fit. I went back up to the PhD office and again I asked a PhD student about what I should do. We went down to the lab and she found a solution! She suggested that I used M4 screws with an M4 --> M6 adapter so that the M6 part could be attached to the t-nut and in turn fit in the aluminium rail - yes! It was sorted and so I called it a day.

The experiment the PhD student in my lab was doing - creating a donut shaped light beam with a laser and an axicon - SUPER COOL!

Handles with the newly drilled holes

Day 3

When I arrived in the office this morning I received an email from Atlas Plastics and he said that he could't get the dimensions of my CAD drawing so I sent him hand drawings of all the dimensions, but luckily I had drawn these a month ago so I used these instead of making new drawings.

I then started working on the solution the PhD student helped me find for the handles and attached the adapters to the screws and it fit! I tried attaching a handle to the aluminium rail and it fit nicely! :) But there was a problem, I ordered 8 handles and I only received 7 so I emailed my supervisor about it. 

At noon I met with Dr. Foster, the Outreach Officer of the Physics Department at Imperial College for a briefing about a demo that I shall be doing at the Imperial Open Day on Saturday (check out my post about the Open Day here) - it's a demo where the A level visitors can have a go at measuring the speed of light with cheese, a microwave, a ruler and calculator! You can do it at home too! Check out the blog for more details and a scientific explanation.

More orders arrived and it really felt like Christmas came early! I was so excited to open the boxes and start building! By the end of the day I had a few cage mounts built!

I then had a short meeting with my supervisor about my CAD drawings and he wanted me to modify them slightly - this included making holes in the back of the plastic casing where screws will be used to attach the casing to the aluminium rail and he also wanted me to round the ends of the slot in the casing. I went down to the lab to measure the distance that the holes in the back of the casing needed to be and got these values:

Handles with the screws

Testing out the handle 

Orders came!

Microscopes!

Lab Snacks! Mmmmm...

Tasty!

Lenses!

Cage mounts taking shape!

Day 4

This morning was different to all the other mornings I started it at my old school where I was there to pick up a plasma ball for the Great People Day event I was going to participate in tomorrow morning. Check this out for more info about the event. It was lovely to meet the technicians and teachers that I worked with when I did the science club at the school, these teachers were also my teachers when I was at the school. I missed them and they missed me too - I'll be at the school soon to do a talk about revision techniques and how to ace A levels at the start of October for my old physics teacher's class. I'm so excited to go back and inspire the younger generation (hopefully!). 

After this, I went to university and finished building all the cage mounts. I soon found out that the adapter rings I needed to attach the microscope to the cage mount were too small. The PhD student I shared the lab with helped me find the right ones on Thorlabs. I sent this to my supervisor for him to order the part.

I received an email from Atlas Plastics with a quote on the pricing for the casing with the new modifications which was accepted by my supervisor and he sent Atlas Plastics an official order form from Imperial College. I then got to work on putting the lenses into their mounts which was complete by the end of the day.

Cage mounts complete!

High speed camera the PhD student in the lab was using - EXTRA COOL! He imaged microscopic particles moving around before they were optically trapped!!

Lens mounts

Attaching the lenses

Cage mounts with lenses

Day 5

After participating in the Great People Day at the Chalfonts Community College in the morning (read more about it here) I got back to university. I arrived at my desk in the PhD office and I saw a huge cardboard box - it was my orders! I took them down to the lab and opened it. It was full of all the electronics relating to the popomatic.

I also received the end caps for the Aluminium rails and attached them using a mallet (which was great fun!). Since I came in late because of the event this morning it was already 5 pm and the researchers and I went to the pub to watch the rugby match! Again, it was lovely to spend time with the researchers in a social setting which always helps break the stereotype that scientists just have their heads stuck in books and do calculations all day without interacting with people.

Tips for Imperial undergrads in Physics

I'm by no means an expert in acing a Physics degree at Imperial College but I wanted to share a few tips with you that may help. 

In lectures don't feel the need to write everything down, focus more on understanding what is being taught. Most lecturers have lecture notes which are available to you before a lecture which you can print out and annotate. Some other lecturers don't have these so bringing in an exercise book specifically for the lecture course is a great way to keep all those notes in one place - you can label the book with the course title, lecture name and the corresponding office hours. 

Study in a way that plays on your strengths. 

Attend office hours to solidly your understanding and get rid of any misunderstandings. One-to-one sessions with an academic can be insightful. 

Studying in a group can be a great opportunity to bounce ideas off each other, making the learning process easier. The Imperial library has a great group study area. 

Different lecture courses have different weightings, so spending more time on the courses with higher weightings is beneficial.

Ask questions. There are lots of people at Imperial that you can ask, this can be your peers, Imperial parents and other Physics undergraduates or postgraduates.

Some lecturers and lecture notes can sometimes be hard to understand. As an alternative, you can use library books and online sources - sometimes just a quick google search on a concept can be enlightening. 

Some of your lecture courses will contain core physics and maths concepts - these act as a foundation for other courses so make sure you understand these well.

Memorise core derivations, key processes or diagrams. Some exam questions test you on these so it will allow you get a nice chunk of marks in an exam if you can write these down from memory.

Post-it notes can be your best friend - writing down main concepts and diagrams on post-it's or making colourful posters and sticking them on your wall and looking at them when you wake up and before you go to bed will help keep those concepts cemented in your mind. Getting you closer to acing that exam! You could also make spider diagrams or voice recordings if these better suit your learning style. 

When in labs try and read the script beforehand - even if you don't understand much of it - this can give you a huge head-start in a lab session and cuts out wasted time on trying to understand the script.

Your assessor in labs is one of your lab demonstrators and each assessor has a different style - make sure you ask them questions about what kind of style lab report they think is correct and how they think you should analyse your data, this will help gain you maximum amount of marks.

In labs find a way to work most efficiently - this could be splitting up jobs, say, one person takes the measurement and the other inputs them into a graphing software. This will save you lots of time so that you can work through the task quicker. 

I hope these tips help you - enjoy your time at Imperial!

*Tips courtesy of Paul Secular. Most points were adapted from a very kind email I received from him with great advice - it was too good so I had to share. You can check out his great website here. 

View of London from the Physics Department at Imperial

Freshers Tips

Thinking about fresher's fair in a few weeks time made me want to write a small blog post on a few tips that may help all you freshers out there.

Here's my ten top tips:

1 Organisation is key

University is a very fast-paced academic environment so keeping well organised with a diary, or apps like Todoist, a to-do list making app, or other apps that can help plan your revision or study timetable will definitely help you to stay on top of the large workload. 

2 Believe in yourself

When you get into university you'll find people who are just as good as you and sometimes you can feel like you are not as good or clever as you were at school. Don't take this to heart, you are still amazing it's just that university is a new challenge to master and it will take time to adjust to the new way of learning. 

3 Work together

Make new friends and work together - you are all in this together. Working with a group of friends gets problem sheets done in half the time and you'll be able to learn and bounce ideas of each other - it's a great way to learn without having the need to pluck the courage to ask a lecturer a question.

4 Talk to academic staff

If you can't seem to get the answer to a problem sheet then pop in for a lecturer's office hour and ask them a question. These one-to-one sessions can be very enlightening and you'll be one step closer to acing those exams! 

5 Relax and take time out for yourself

You can easily get caught up with the large workload and forget to take time out for yourself. Join clubs and societies, not only to meet new friends but to keep those stress levels at an all time low. Keep those school hobbies alive. 

6 Remember everyone is in the same boat

If you find yourself finding things tough chances are a lot of people are feeling the same thing - university can be very tough but everyone is in the same boat. Speak to your friends and you'll soon find that they are also feeling the same way as you - you'll feel tonnes better after having a chat. 

7 Keep motivated

When things get tough remember why you are doing a degree - whether you want to be the next new scientist, entertain the world, make people feel better or whatever it may be, keep imagining yourself fulfilling that dream and remember you can do anything you put your mind do. Hang on in there it always gets better.

8 Uni is very different to school

The learning environment at university is very different from school. You'll be in a lecture theatre filled with hundreds of students and asking questions like you did in a school lesson with less than 30 students is completely different to asking a question in a full lecture theatre! You'll have tutorials, laboratory sessions (if you've taken a course that requires you to do labs) and lectures. Tutorials feel a lot like being in school where you'll have around 25 students in a class led by a lecturer (class sizes vary at different universities) and go through a set of problems and have a chance to discuss and ask questions relating to the lecture course. Labs is a chance for you to carry out experiments and solidify main concepts you have learnt - you'll be in pairs so make sure you choose a partner you feel you can work with for a whole year. It will take time getting used to the new routine so don't worry if you do feel a little overwhelmed with the change. 

9 Speak out

If you do find things too tough, speak out. There are people at university like your personal tutor that can guide you in the right direction and offer you great advice.

10 Enjoy your degree

Enjoy every moment of your degree - you are learning new things and getting closer to your dream job. Enjoy all the opportunities that uni life provides you with.

My last words: Work hard, make time for yourself and fulfil your dreams.

These freshers tips were featured in the Imperial College Success Guide here.

Week 7: Summer Placement

Day 1

The group meeting was cancelled this morning as my supervisor was busy with lots of meetings with the IFE (Inertial Fusion Energy) Network and CIFS (Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies). So instead I took this opportunity to clean up my lab space - it was so lovely to be back in the lab! I missed it so much. I then plotted all the data I had collected from my previous measurements of the spectra of a white light source passing through different optics - I had 22 graphs by the end of the day!

Clear skies

Sunny day

Plotted graphs

Treat from a PhD student :) mmmm...

My lab workspace 

 Day 2

My supervisor was very busy with the IFE Network conference and I couldn't meet him today - so instead I took the opportunity to have a science-y morning at the Science Museum. As Imperial College student I and a friend got to watch an IMAX film for free - we choseso I went with a friend to watch Robots 3D. It was so inspiring to see the work of scientists paying off to create incredible robots! My favourite was the robot that could catch balls almost as well as a human! The 3D effect was AMAZING! I've never experienced such a great 3D effect.

FUN FACT: The height of the IMAX screen is the size of four double-decker buses!!

It would be one of the most brilliant things if I could build something that everyone could use or  something that would increase the quality of life - maybe a career in bioengineering or a similar field would be something right up my street or even yours. Don't limit yourself to common career paths like medicine, law or dentistry - there are lots of exciting careers out there for you to consider and one of the is perfect for you!

If you are looking for a fun, science-y weekend then check out the science museum. The new cosmonauts exhibition is opening soon so don't miss out!

I got back into the lab in the afternoon and labeled my graphs with a description of the optic in question - such as orange with green tint. I also found some cool optics on the way - one of them looked like a standard mirror but when I looked through it it was like a red filter! See pictures below:

The lights without looking through an optic

Seeing red through the Al-mirror-looking optic

Seeing red

The Al-mirror-looking optic

Seeing purple through an Al mirror-looking optic

Looks like an Al mirror

Iris

The different optical pieces I worked with

One of the optics I characterised

Part of another experiment in the lab I was working with which I thought looked quite artistic

3D glasses

Cravings exhibition in Science Museum

Science Museum

Day 3

The group meeting this morning was very inspirational. I've missed so much science in the month that I was away! One of the PhD students had a sleepless night because of physics - he thought of a way to get rid of back scatter from a laser system. His supervisor was amazed and so, I too, was in awe - it was such a cool moment, the room went quiet as he spoke his intellectual mind. I couldn't have asked for a better return to the group. New experiments were underway and there was a lot of collaboration. After the meeting I worked with a PhD student to order the parts for the popomatic - this meant taking the popomatic down to the lab and taking it apart so we could identify the parts. :) After this, we had some lunch as a group and it was nice to be with the group again. We got back into the lab and the PhD student quickly identified the basic parts such as the cage you see in the popomatic, the posts, post-holders, lens mounts and other related objects. The lenses were cleaned using the drag method, I mentioned in a previous post, and we found that they weren't labeled so we had to find the focal lengths of the lenses ourselves in the only way we know - an experiment. In order to do this we needed to set up a collimated light beam (light that is in the same direction and all parallel to each other). I used my previous set up that I characterised optics with to set up a collimated white light beam but there was a lot of chromatic aberration (separation of different wavelengths) due to the spherical lens I was using to collimate the beam. Instead the PhD student set up a system which expanded a laser beam and then collimated it to a larger beam diameter. A waveplate and calcite cube was used in the system which were pieces of equipment I had learnt in my second year of undergraduate studies - it was so nice to relate what I had learnt to what I was doing in the lab! After having made the collimated laser beam of larger diameter, we put the optics in and measured the focal length (the distance from the centre of the lens to the point where the diameter of the laser/light beam is the smallest). We found that the lenses were planoconvex lenses (shaped like a half moon) with focal lengths of 15 and 20 cm. We found these lenses on Thorlabs (supplier of optical equipment) and I then put the part numbers, price and quantities of each item we wanted to purchase in a spreadsheet so that I could get a feel for the overall price. We found lots of aluminium optical rails that I could use as the backbone of the popomatic but needed to find out the names of the screws that we needed to mount the optics to the rail. This was a task for tomorrow.

The current version of the popomatic

Cage mount from the popomatic

Finding the lenses I need and putting the part details in a spreadsheet

My lab work space

The laser system I used to find the focal lengths of the lenses

Birefringent material

Waveplate - linearly polarises the light

Calcite cube

Finding the names of all the screws I needed was a bit of a challenge but a great learning experience

Day 4 and 5

Turns out the aluminium optical rail was too small for the popomatic so instead I found a thicker one on RS Components, a leading distributor of electronics, electrical and industrial components, and so ordered it from here. The PhD students were always willing to help me with part names and other questions I had. I am ever so grateful for their help. I continued with searching for the parts I needed for the four popomatics I shall be building in the coming weeks. I split the parts list into optics, housing and electronics and sent them to my supervisor for him to order them. I also got in contact with The Plastic Shop to get a quote for the housing for the popomatic, a plastic tube. Who knew it would cost £150 for a 1 m tube of acrylic! Over the weekend I plan to send my CAD drawings to another company recommended by my supervisor in order to get a quote for the acrylic tubes I need.

Aluminium profile I require but couldn't find a larger size at the time

Add caption

Finding the parts I need

Quick drawing of the slit in the popomatic casing (where balloons are inserted) - to be sent to companies for a quote on pricing for an acrylic tube with the slit cut

ABS box - electronics kept inside

Key switch for popomatic 

A lovely view of London from Imperial's Physics Department (Level 10)

The weather was great on Thursday so I shall end this blog with a lovely picture of the sunset I saw in Hyde Park after a game of frisbee with friends after work. Enjoy your weekend!

Hyde Park sunset

Sunset outside Physics Department

Lovely weather - clear skies