Thank you and Goodbye

Hello,

My last view in the beamline...

So this is my last two days at Diamond. Safe to say, I have enjoyed almost every second... especially when things have worked. However, I still had a very busy last couple of days so...

Thursday I concentrated upon making the track secure. Up until now, I've been using a magnetic mat to hold them down a little more firmly, but this obviously couldn't replace being held down. What was needed was a high-tech, mechanical solution... so naturally I used Velcro. This was not, however, normal Velcro, but industrial strength stuff offered to me by the beamline technician. The glue on the back was incredibly strong, so I was able to use that to hold the magnets firmly in place, whilst experimenting with the 'soft' side as a base.

Otherwise, I spent the day finalising all the documents, such as my report, instruction manual and poster, the latter being sent off to print. This largely involved many pretty pictures and shifting a text box up and down minute distances. All in the name of attractiveness.

...and my last capillaries.

Friday, and my FINAL DAY AT DIAMOND, started peacefully. However, I was told to come to the beamline mid-morning to have a meeting with my supervisor and found a train-shaped cake waiting for me. Baked by my supervisor, it looked wonderful and was delicious and I thank her for it. There was also a gift and card signed by those on my beamline who I've been so lucky to work with.

As I said, though, the last day was still busy, and after eating a slice, I had my Velcro and magnets checked over by an insertion device physicist (who got a slice of cake too for all his help), so I was able to permanently bind them together. The track done, I also cleared up some of my equipment round the lab.

In the afternoon, I was also clearing my desk, but then went into the lab. Partly to finish clearing (I filled a pot of many waste powders I've collected over my weeks at Diamond), but also to load two last capillaries; well, it wouldn't be a last day without doing some. The powders have been through the SQUID and, in such small quantities, are held in the end by a thinner capillary slotted in on top. And guess what? I didn't break ANY whilst preparing them. My training is complete :D

My last view of Diamond.

I'd like to thank everyone for my time at Diamond, including my supervisors, everyone on I11 beamline, the Insertion Device group (for the magnets), comms for their help on the Open Days, all the other placement students and many other scientists and technicians who have helped my train hover. I have had a truly wonderful summer and have learnt so much.

And, of course, thank you to all who have read my blog.

Hover soon (I hope).

Demo Days

Hello,

It has been a far colder, more active this week so far, and my last here at Diamond. The weeks have flown by.


Monday was centred around a practice presentation. In the morning, I reviewed my presentation with my supervisor and was able to pick up a few tips to improve it further. By the afternoon, though, I had a mini audience as I gave the talk, this time incorporating a small demonstration along with. I thank all my audience members, who were the staff on the beamline for their attention and suggestions and support when my truck promptly fell apart. I now know not to strap the superconductors on in a hurry.

That afternoon, I also managed to figure out a way of storing the track, at least temporarily. Wrapping the set-up in foil and cardboard allows it to be kept flat and reduce the magnetic field considerably.

Tuesday morning was spent taking on board these suggestions and improving my poster. As mentioned, science posters are a good, visual way to impart information to many people, but they come with the restrictions of space and needing lots of images. Most my time was cutting down sentence size.

The afternoon was a long session with liquid nitrogen and the new superconductors which arrived over the weekend. This allowed me to set up plenty of trials and even attached more superconductors to the train, though in many cases it over-balanced them. However, I gained this footage, for those who've missed my demonstrations. The beeping is my oxygen monitor.

Wednesday started with me setting up the trains again, ready for the real presentation. The whole kit was carried to Diamond House's meeting room and I set it all out on the table. I did manage to catch most the talks, including ones about terahertz radiation to count electron clusters in the beam, steadying a imaging machine and topological insulators (find out more at diamondlifeblog.tumblr.com/post/92147428772)(apologies for bad explanations).

Unfortunately, I missed one talk, setting trains to cool. My presentation seemed to go down well, and I had 4 floating objects which I cycled through in order to let many people see. As mentioned in my speech, people seem to like physical demonstrations.

That afternoon, I was experimenting with bigger trains, along with 2 of the other placement students. They say a picture paints a thousand words so look!

Type soon!

 

Tracking in Grass

Hello,

This week has revolved around reports, presentations and posters... but of course, I've been making trains hover in between.



Monday I settled into preparing a report and instruction manual for the train. Hopefully, the train will be there for anyone at the beamline to use.

Tuesday, after a morning of poster work, I got out the office and started testing the arrangements to stop the train heading straight off the end of the track; the train can move fairly freely and Betsy could be hurt if she keeps running off the end of the track. In this, the sheep were helpful (yes, really). If they were knocked over, the train had gone a bit far, a good indication through the nitrogen fumes. The train is taking shape now, with grass and more people. Though the grass... sheds rather at the moment. A rather large clean-up operation followed.

Wednesday, however, I went back to presentation work, ready for the presentation next Wednesday. However, Diamond was buzzing as it held its User meeting, a chance for all the users to present their work in talks and posters over the course of two days - proof that I am still getting proper scientific experience. Though I personally like to mix it with labs.

Type soon.

PS. I'm on holiday over the end of the week, but next week, I start my last 5 days at Diamond.

Toys and Presentations

Hello,

Well, after the business of last week, things were much calmer this week, not least because we kicked it all off with a bank holiday. And rain.

Betsy now has spare wagons.

So by Tuesday, I was ready to go. I began by chasing up some more trains, ready as spares in case any of the trains get damaged along the way. Being dunked in liquid nitrogen isn't a usual environment after all. I also went about procuring some grass mats from a Modelling shop and deciding on other characters and decorations.

Aside from this, I began work on an instruction manual. The aim is that anyone (with common sense) can get out and use the train on Open Days (which Diamond host fairly often). Thus, it is handy to have a quick start guide.

During the afternoon, I began to use the software Origin to sort out the graphs I want to use. And during this, I found some interesting properties in some of the data I collected.

To do work, I had to tidy my desk. I had too many toys lying around.
And with the arrival of more, it got worse.

I continued this task over to Wednesday. However, it was broken up by attending some presentations by some of the other placement students. The variety of the placement projects make this a very worth while and interesting session and I come away knowing a lot more about SAX (small angle X-ray imaging) and the magnetic modelling and experiments occurring elsewhere around the beamline. I thank all three students for this.


Thursday I went about preparing my own presentation, showing a rough draft to my supervisor. If you are preparing a presentation, I recommend getting someone else to check it over with you, as things may not be as clear as you would like them to be. I went away with several suggestions. I'm doing this alongside a report and a poster so all these documents are keeping me busy as I wait for parts to start appearing.

Type soon!

Communicating Physics

Hello,

Picture tweeted by @DiamondLightSou of me demonstrating.

Well, I know some of you will have seen what I've been up to this week.

Wednesday was the Open Day. We set up in the beamline between 9-10, ready to show around visitors the beam room and my hovering train. And when the groups started coming, it was non-stop from there forward. For every group, I was presenting a little bit of information about what superconductors are, why they're important and what I was doing with them. Then I got to show them.  No train has been dunked in liquid nitrogen quite so regularly, but I was able, in the most part to demonstrate my project, even performing an old cliché of slipping a piece of paper underneath whilst levitating.

As a nice surprise, many of the other placement students also popped up around lunchtime to watch me perform the levitation. I was really pleased with the response I got not just from them, but from everyone in general, who seemed to enjoy the day; my project is, after all, an Outreach activity and so if I can interest people, even briefly, that's my job complete.

Though busy, it didn't stop us having a little fun near the end of the day as we tried floating little model people (her name is Betsy) in trucks. The results can be seen in this (speeded up I might add) gif:

  http://makeagif.com/cYaVFf

 

The right 2 have been to heavy to hover, but the left three have all been
in the air. His name is Fred.

Thursday was almost inevitably a lot calmer, but I was happy spending the day making the presentation ready for the end of my placement. It did entail though wandering the whole of the way around the synchrotron ring taking a few pictures. Throughout the day though I was trying the think up ways of mounting my track which...

The arrangement for my track - 4 North poles facing up, surrounded by 6 South
poles facing up.

On Friday, I managed using the arrangement to the right. The North poles down the middle created a high magnetic field track, causing a perfect contour for the superconducting disks to follow. The South poles down both sides hold the North poles close together, preventing them from repelling one another too much; any gaps cause the train to unceremoniously fall. This floated my train so successfully, I had to make cardboard buffers as it flew off the end!

 The rest of the day was spent trying to track down more of the little trains I'm using, designing a full length stretch of track and looking for decorations for the train. After all, it'll look nicer with a bit of grass and a station.  

Other events on Friday included giving an interview about me and my placement for Diamond Comms Dep, hoping to also spread Diamond's fame both within and outside Harwell Campus, and some chocolate being left in our office by some of the other placement students. Thanks guys!

Type soon!
PS. Background picture is the capillary furnace glowing in the beamline (found I'd left some pictures on the camera).

Let's Hover

Hello,

Well, the beamtime may be over, but it just means the train must progress.

A sad non-levitating train, even if steam is coming from its chimney.

Wednesday morning, first thing, I glued up the engine, stinking out the lab with the glue. Had to leave it in the fume cupboard to dry. However, it was ready for an afternoon of testing which... didn't go so well. Turns out the glue wasn't as much as a problem as the bottom warping upon meeting the cold. It was throwing superconductors everywhere.

I did tape it up (seeing as sellotape seems to be the only reliable thing) and managed to get an engine which didn't leak. And didn't levitate. I now blame its weight. I re-glued it to be left over the weekend.

Thursday and Friday I was on holiday because, well, I was fairly tired by this point. 10 day week and all.

Monday morning, though, I was  back and ready to try again. After a quick meeting with a insertion device scientist (he deals in many magnets), we decided to try stronger magnets and different arrangements. The samarium cobalt magnets were replaced first by neodymium iron boron magnets and then by one of the largest permanent magnets I'd seen. It was about the size of  half a brick.

However, this turned out to be too powerful and couldn't even hover a single superconductor disk (a feat I've managed before. This is due to superconductors having a critical magnetic field. Like the critical temperature, once above this, the superconductor can no longer superconductor; it becomes an expensive black disk. The neodymium magnets did provide lift on the disk... but the magnetic field peaked so dramatically, it was hard to balance the disk at a height of about 10 cm.

So we were back with the samarium cobalt magnets... and a non-levitating train.

So, with a public viewing looming, Tuesday morning I was off to the shops. Yes, that's right, I got to spend 2 hours going around toy shops for trains, cars and skateboards (because hoverboards would be awesome too). And look what I manged Tuesday afternoon:

OH YES!!!

Type soon!

PS. All magnets used are those leftover from the building of the beamline. They help direct the beam and maintain its energy.

PPS. I will hopefully be adding to the picture collection here and on Twitter (@AdamasRos) 

Culham, Trains and Nightime Beamtime.

Hello,

I do not apologise for the length of this post as it matches this weekend. Working at Diamond is never monotonous.

A model of the inside of JET, the torus tokamak. The plasma is held within the kidney
shaped areas by magnets... and superconductors play their role!

On Thursday morning, I came back to stuffing quartz wool and YBCO salts into open capillaries. By the end, I had manged to fill and mount one, which I felt was quite an achievement. The afternoon, however, I was off to Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. There, they have the world's largest tokamak. With it, they are able to create a plasma out of heavier isotopes of hydrogen (a hydrogen atom with extra neutrons). With it, they are hoping to help find a clean and abundant power source for the future, along with the developing remote handling systems like MASCOT (who looks so like Wall-e). If you want to know more, visit http://www.ccfe.ac.uk/

Friday, however, was back to the trains. Some more empty engine shells had arrived, so I spent my morning patching up wholes and trying them with the superconductors. No joy... yet... The afternoon, I finished creating a spare gas cell capillary because...

Saturday was BEAMTIME! That morning, we attached and aligned the gas cell and hooked it up to the oxygen flow for the gas to flow through. The experiment involved heating the capillary up using a hot air blower and watching for changes.

Leaving it there for several hours, however, didn't actually seem to do much, so we began loading normal capillary (hard as my salts had clumped a little) and set up a low pressure gas experiment, pumping in oxygen. We watched it heat and began writing scripts for overnight dwelling... until the capillary disappeared. As it was getting late at this point, we left it to get some sleep so we were prepared for...

The beamroom at night... not actually that different from day, except
for the peacefulness.

More beamtime Sunday. This turned into a long day. Since the YBCO had to be loaded into really thin capillaries (it absorbs the radiation well), we put this on the back burner so to speak and moved onto another compound. This one, we were able fill into larger capillaries and pump He through in the hope that it could capture some of it. Slowly increasing the pressure, we hoped to see a change in the diffraction pattern.

My little engine, awaiting the judgement by nitrogen.

Whilst analysing these results, we repeated the experiment, but using Oxygen, to try to show whether the He had changed the crystal more than the beam did. To further our evidence, we followed this up with a different compound which shouldn't react with the He at all. With so many experiments and so much capillary heating, we eventually left the beamline at 1.30AM! Diamond at night is so quiet!

Monday morning, (and I do mean 9am-no liein) we came down to our results... only to find the computer script had failed to take the scans! Sad times, but I was able to manually perform the experiment and follow it up with a repetition of the He experiments in the hope of clearer results. I'm now able to mount the samples, lockup the beam room and set scans going.

The afternoon, though, was back to the train and my conclusion was superglue can't cope with liquid nitrogen... oh well. Needless to say, there were many leaks. And 3 broken magnets. Oops.

So to Tuesday, the order of the day was glues. I created samplers of glues and left them to dry over lunch so later in the afternoon I could try them in the liquid nitrogen. They seemed to work so tomorrow, my train is about to get coated!

Type soon!

  PS. It wasn't all work. I've learnt 2 new board games and eaten many biscuits 
whilst waiting for things to heat and pattern emerge.