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).

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.

Beamtime!

Hello

I start by saying I hope to get my camera into a lab soon. But the past few days, I've been rather busy as I went...

From hot to cold these past few days. It started Friday, when I has not one but two furnaces heating away as I worked on another batch of capillaries. Having made:

The tablets go from a clay colour to black when heated

•  pelleted and pelleted-halfway-through-heating (phth as I will now call it... 'cos I'm lazy) superconductor in air
•  a unpelleted and phth superconductor with a low flow of oxygen (and the furnace did switch off and I did jump for joy)

  the final combination was pelleted in oxygen and unpelleted in air. Since the latter didn't required oxygen, I used the box furnaces instead.

This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been making more capillaries from samples of the last four pellets in the room next door. Phew! And for the mathematician who likes to have a scoreboard:

Capillary 5  Ros 10

I also made a capillary of the salts mixed but not heated because...

Monday I had beamtime!

What's more, I froze! A student on a brief bit of work experience has a small project and for it there were three of us grinding up samples to compared usin7g the beam. And my sample needed to be kept cool, so I did it in the fridge. 

I say three of us, since there was also another intern getting a taste of lab life; he's designing software to help with the data collected on our beamline and came to have a look at what we do. Goes to show, there are a lot of people working outside the beamline rooms to get it running smoothly.

The afternoon, we actually placed  14 samples (including my superconductor samples and mixed salts) into the beam in order to get results. The beam hit the sample and we took a diffraction pattern using the detectors that surround the capillaries. The equipment at Diamond is really highly sensitive and so it gave rather wiggly lines, but by the end, I could make out distinct peaks showing a change from the mixed salt to the cooked superconductors.

Overnight, we left the detectors taking periodic scans of the mixed salts being heated and cooled in situ so we look at the phase change. That's right: I'm doing an experiment using a synchrotron.

The beamline has a traffic light warning system. Red means 'No Entry'. And yes, I hope to get a proper photo.

Coming in Tuesday morning, I'd found my capillary had... well... exploded overnight. On the bright side though, most of the measurements had been made by that point and were waiting to be analysed. 

However, the day was rather busy. There were new users setting up, a meeting with a H&S man, who told us about the 5S process of organisation, a beamline safety meeting (extremely important), tidying up in the lab ready for the monthly Health and Safety checks (like I said, extremely important) and capillaries to load of the superconductors made on Friday. 

The data rather feel by the side for the day, but we did establish that the salts would need to be mixed in a quartz capillary to survive the heating. 

Last job of the day was to put on a new superconductor to cook. I feel I'm becoming quite  chef.

And the final capillary count (inc. the colder attempts):

Capillary 9  Ros 13

 Still winning.

Type soon!

Picture from Clipart.