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!

Into the Beam Room

Hello,

 
Starting again on Monday and getting into the week with Beamtime. After gaining a diffraction pattern of the last YBCO I made, the morning was spent attaching the capillary furnace, known as the STOIE, in the beamline; you can see pictures of it to the left. This allows the capillary to be heated more accurately and uniformly than the alternative, the hot air blower, meaning we can get nice diffraction patterns of the YBCO salts heating up.

In principle. After a few coding problems, the furnace started glowing at lower temperatures than expected and the whole experiment switched off early as a safety measure. Turned out, the thermocouple inside was rather damaged, so had to be replaced. Meanwhile, I loaded a capillary of platinum (approx. £10 worth before anyone gets too excited) to use as an alignment help later.

Once working, we started aligning a new salt capillary. This one though provided us with a few difficulties and it was while swapping it for another that I accidentally broke a capillary. Whilst becoming a rarer occurrence, I'm pleased to say, this time it did get stuck in the furnace. In the end, we switch stages (the type of stand in front of the beam) and did 'Rapid Access'; these are samples sent in just for a quick scan.

The STOIE surrounded by the giant detectors.

With the upcoming beamtime over the weekend, on Tuesday I started researching a Plan B for the time then. As a scientist, you must always be prepared for not getting what you expected, because half the time, you're trying something which may not work. For this, I was researching reactions and compounds using the Oxides I'm using for the synthesis (Barium Carbonate, Yttrium Oxide and Copper (II) Oxide).

However, there was a break as I went to a skills session of presentations. It is always useful to be able to talk other people through the work you are doing to encourage interest and further research in the subject.

The gas cell capillary enables gases to flow across the sample in situ.

Wednesday got very cold first thing, as I tried to get a train to levitate with the superconductors attached. Trying several ways and butchering it with pliers, I did get slight lift off the rear of the engine briefly, but the liquid nitrogen poured off almost as fast as it was added.

In the afternoon, I practiced preparing a gas cell capillary. This involves wrapping the sample up in quartz wool and sliding it into an open-ended tube held in a stand as shown. Whilst I didn't break many blank capillaries while practicing loading them into the stand, it turns out the putting cotton-wool-like material is harder than it looks (and it looks hard). However, I didn't break anything while doing it, so tomorrow morning, I should be able to go back and try again.

Type soon.