First Week

 Hello,

So, many of you will remember how nervous the first days of work are. Meeting people, trying to remember their names, learning your way round, trying to remember people's roles, filling out all the essential paperwork, trying to remember everything.

There's also the fun (and, of course, most important part) of the Health and Safety talk. These come in many shapes and forms and many people (whether they should or not) roll their eyes at the prospect. However, just before I went into the second session of the day, my supervisor pointed at two screens displaying the view of two rooms and said:

'If you're in that one when the beam is turned on, you'll be dead in forty seconds. If you're in that one when the beam is on, you'll be dead in ten seconds.'

And so I welcome you to the world of Diamond Light Source, the UK's synchrotron,

I should break here and say that the place is incredibly safe. I had an induction day a few weeks ago and did asked about the shielding. There are thick, and I'm talking several feet, slabs of concrete encasing the beam and everything yellow is coated in lead. There's a lot of yellow. The net result is that the radiation levels are well inkeeping with those issued by the Government, and, well, I had to go through all training and take a test just to be allow to wander freely to 'my' office (we'll get to 'my' office).

The morning was full of the usual HR paperwork and introductions. There were 8 new summer placement students joining alongside me, on top of many already there and more coming. We are all on different projects. There's crystallography, powder diffraction, app making... Diamond boasts a fair range of experiments happening all the time, with over 20 beamlines (beamline 24 only opened last year) coming off the main synchrotron. This includes biology, chemistry and, of course, Physics; I'm a second year Physicist.



During the afternoon, I met with my supervisor and a post-doc currently working on the same beamline I'm attached to. And so began my attempts to research. This was interrupted very quickly by the fact that they were getting a robot arm to move around.We were able to watch this through a piece of lead lined glass and on the screens which eventually caused the previous comment. I also met a lovely astrophysicist also working on the beam, the technician, who I will endeavour to remain on the good side of, and the beamline manager, a very friendly peaceful man, who greeted me by saying 'I have a present for you' and handing an envelope of great importance.

My supervisor also went over my aims for the placement, as I'm currently working on a 12 week project to create a

superconducting train track 

 (yes, I know it sounds awesome)

 I won't bore you with too many details about why what I'm doing will one day save the world, feed the hungry and allow everyone to own a unicorn. Just trust me, it will (I wish). I will however say that by reducing friction on a vehicle you need less force to keep it going along. If the vehicle floats, well then you only have drag, which has less effect than rolling friction. The result is a vehicle which, once started doesn't need much help to keep going and going and going... Superconductors allow such levitation. (I'll explain more over the next few weeks)

The next day I was shown to 'my' office (said I'd get there). Let me explain. I am so valued, I have my own workstation in my own, large empty office... which may fill up as more summer students arrive and the postgrad student who works half a week there, half a week elsewhere. Still, for the day, it was just little me (little describes me well; I'm 5'3).

All projects have to start somewhere and seeing as the beamline team were just preparing an experiment, I started a literature search. I advise any of you who find my explanations basic to read around and look up papers.

My main aim was to see what information there is on previous superconducting tracks. The answer is a lot, but quite much of it is irrelevant as it uses the wrong superconductor or was about actual MagLev trains. I was also looking out for information on the superconductor I will be synthesising. Known often as YBCO, YBa2Cu3O7-x is a high temperature superconductor, meaning it superconducts at relatively high temperatures (ie. below 92K). This means liquid nitrogen, at 77K, can be used to cool it down enough to display the superconducting property, a useful little trick.

I also pulled up a few papers on the effects of changing the ratios and oxygen flow during synthesis, so you may hear about one or two experiments along those lines.

Lunch with the beamline staff featured a chat about the football... well, it was England's last game last night, so hopefully such conversations won't happen again (I'm a  cricket girl). However, there was also some discussion about the various industry projects coming to the beamline over the next couple of weeks. Many people visit the beamline to perform experiments, for research or industry, due to its high resolution capabilities. Due to all the safety, a member of the beamline team must also be present for much of this. My supervisor commented how some researchers come in with a 'fantastically clean sample', only for her to find every flaw - it doesn't look so clean after the readings come back.

To Wednesday, and I still find the office empty. Not that I mind as it means I can spread out for the next bit: railway layout planning. There is something very satisfying about entering the stationary office and asking for 'the biggest bit of paper they can offer'. I was more disappointed though that they didn't ask about what I wanted it for... I really wanted to see their faces as I replied 'railway planning.

It turned out that it was A2, which was just big enough; the track has to be able to pack away and fit on a table with screen and board. The next job was working out the size of the track, the curve of the corners, whether I could fit it to a common model railway gauge. It is thus my pleasure to announce that, all things going to plan, I will have an O gauge railway, complete with Nitrogen 'steam'.

Lunch today was spent with some other interns, although these were actually working on projects at RAL space, another part of the campus. It's a great opportunity to hear other research and projects across the campus. I believe I've mentioned the diversity of the place.

Back to work and more reading, but this time calculations as well. The first task was to work out how many magnets I'll need. We have some very strong magnets at our disposal. I'm talking possibly enough to make phones, credit cards and pacemakers worried.

I also followed this up with reading around the amount of superconductor required. To say I've made an estimate is almost too kind to the back-of-the-envelope calculations I performed (I'm a Physicist, it's allowed). The force between the levitating superconductor and the magnet rely on the critical current density (reliant on the shape and quality of the sample), the magnetic field (reliant on the distance and shape of the sample) and the volume. Result: change one parameter, you change the sum in three places. Most people would perform it on a computer if they wanted the theory, but since I can measure most of it, I'll let the experiments do the talking.

Finally, one achievement of the day: I managed to catch the bus at the end. It required sprinting halfway around the ring... and the ring is large.  

Thursday began by searching for railway engines. I came across quite a variety, from hollow Hornby bodies to wooden children's toys. All in search of one which fitted the actually rather strict criteria:

1.  Light. I'm trying to levitate something. Without magic. Leviosa won't cut it.
2. Has a base. To stick the superconductor to.
3. Can withstand liquid nitrogen. Which is certainly a novel condition. This done, the rest of the day was spent trying to work out the risks of the permanent magnets we're trying to use. I mentioned the magnets were strong. And I may be using almost 40 of them. Well, this means I have to make sure that the public are kept safe during operation - a simple sign just won't cut it. The trick is to somehow shield the magnet field from me and the public as much as possible. 

Intriguing this is a lot harder said than done. Whilst an active shield, such as sending a current round to block the field would be effective, it would also affect the train in adverse ways (like derailing it in an awful, mangled crash). Likewise with using other magnets to block the field.

Eventually, I settled on using dielectric and conducting materials, such as aluminium, since I can place this around the tracks. Rest assured, all safety plans are going to a safety officer in the next couple of weeks, so if you are planning on visiting to see my creation, whatever form it takes, on an open day, don't be scared.

You only have me to fear ;-) 

Finally, Friday. It's been an amazing first week and I've certainly learnt a lot. And frankly I started Friday as many people would want to - buying four pieces of wooden track from a toy store. Sometimes the simplest things are the gems in life.

However, on a more serious note, I also went through the risk assessment of the synthesis technique. I'm going to be following some undergraduate instructions for chemists, but still Ba(NO3)2 can be quite nasty to inhale, so I'll be using the fume cupboard. 

One experiment I did perform today (yes, I was actually performing an experiment, rather than reading about them) was testing the strength of the magnets when joined up as a track. This involved a Gauss probe and a wooden trolley - they stuck to the table. This actually, like a lot of science, threw up a result we weren't expecting.

Picture your normal bar magnet and you probably think of the top picture. The magnets we have are the bottom pictures... but on the plus side they're not as strong as we feared.

I went back to the drawing board on the track, but there's a high probability I can use a NS arrangement which cancels excess magnetic field to the public, whilst keeping the train nice and stable. Maybe. It's all still working progress... obviously. Though we're going to try things next week with a superconducting disk that 'happens to be lying around'. 'Cos everyone has a superconducting disk in a drawer somewhere it seems.

Lesson to learn: Experiment can tell you a lot more than theory sometimes.

However, my views on the week.

1.  I think this project is going to be a fair amount of fun to work on. I've been researching phase analysis of YBCO and toy trains this week. As well as designing a railway layout.
2. The people at Diamond are all pretty friendly. I mean, really friendly. I've been sat in my lonely office, but that hasn't been bad as I've had people going past waving and smiling at me. And I don't know them. 
3. The people I'm working with are helpful, kind and don't seem to mind me asking questions like 'So, where have you been to any good conferences?
4. Didcot is sunnier than home. There's been one thunderstorm. The rest of the time it's been sunny and hot. At home, it was just humid and hot. 

So all in all, pretty good.

Type soon.