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.

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)