Sunday 16th December Dr Martin Christlieb                                                                                                                            Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, enquiries@oncology.ox.ac.uk Oxford Biomedical Imaging Network martin.christlieb@oncology.ox.ac.uk http://www.imaging.ox.ac.uk/network-members/mchristlieb/ Modern medical imaging The oncology group at Oxford has just had its second birthday and it was set up in response to the NHS’ need for research into cancer. The group consist of 450 people […]

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Saturday 15th December Astrophysics activities for the classroom Dr Sian Owen schools.liaison@physics.ox.ac.uk s.owen1@physics.ox.ac.uk The activities focused on space science and astronomy, with links to current research. Topics covered included the Solar System, evolution of stars, galaxies and the expansion of the universe. http://www.planethunters.org/ Transit activity The above activity was a model to show how some […]

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Saturday 15th December Trip to Diamond Light Source Facility http://www.diamond.ac.uk/ Robotic planetary exploration – Revealing the mysteries of our Solar System http://www.univ.ox.ac.uk/univ-people/dr-leigh-n-fletcher http://www.atm.ox.ac.uk/user/fletcher/Site/Welcome.html Dr Fletcher is a planetary scientist and Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Dr Fletcher specialises in exploring the formation, dynamics, meteorology and chemistry of planetary atmospheres, for both […]

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Friday 14th December Due to teaching my lovely year 13 students I wasn’t able to attend Friday’s lectures so what I am writing for this section is just a summary of what I missed. Tracking magnetic fields with SQUIDs Dr Samuel Henry Department of Physics University of Oxford http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/users/henry/ http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/henry SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices) […]

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The Maxwell Society was established in 1935 by Sir Edward Victor Appleton, Wheatstone Professor of Physics at the University of London, 1924-1936, and was named in honour of the pioneering physicist and King College’s own genius of electromagnetism, James Clerk Maxwell, Professor of Natural Philosophy at King’s College London, between 1860 and 1865. It was […]

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I hope that the students and staff of Rooks Heath won’t mind me using the blog to do a spot of reminiscing but the good news is that it does involve physics and one of Rooks Heath ex-students occurs in it. After graduating in 1985 I was privileged to spend three years doing research at […]

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Democritus and Aristotle by Sulaxchane Balachanthiran Democritus Democritus was born in Abdera at around 460 BCE (he died around 370 BCE), in Thrace, ancient Greece. Even though he is classified as a philosopher he was more of scientist. He was the first person to formulate an atomic theory and was one of the earliest Greeks […]

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‘‘Chocolate Unwrapped’’ Trip Report by Pameer Saeed This report will describe how chocolate companies make chocolate, what conditions are necessary and how these are used in order to produce sweet and delicious chocolates. History of Chocolate When most of us hear the word chocolate, we picture a bar or a box of chocolates. The verb […]

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Institute of Physics lecture Throughout the year the Institute of Physics puts on lectures about different aspects of physics. On the 31st of October the lecture was about meteorites and what they can tell us about how the universe, stars and planets can form. Astronomy by Microscope                                                                 Professor Monica Grady                                                                             Department of Physical Sciences at […]

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Physics and Chocolate Believe it or not physics is involved in chocolate production. Without the careful use of temperature and pressure we wouldn’t have the wonderful confectionary that adults and children alike have grown to love. On October 13th year 12 physics students went to the “chocolate unwrapped” exhibition to learn more about the production […]

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