The second lecture was given by Dr Theo Kreouzis about photovoltaic cells. The intensity of direct sunlight is about 1000 Wm^-2 (which is an awful lot). This gives about 150Wm^-2 over a year in the UK. Solar power is now a viable option as photovoltaics are much cheaper now. Students often get the photovoltaic effect […]
Read more "QMU – July 2012"The first lecture of day was given by Professor Carl Murray. He discussed the Cassini mission to Saturn. He is the only UK member of the imaging team and he described recent results which could impact on our understanding of planetary formation. Cassini–Huygens is a flagship-class NASA–ESA–ASIspacecraft sent to the Saturn system. It has studied […]
Read more "QMU – 2012"Queen Mary College University of London put on a day of activities for physics teachers about topics that would interest their students. The day started out with information about what physics related degrees are on offer at the College and about outreach activities. Queen Mary offers degrees in physics, astrophysics, theoretical physics and physics with […]
Read more "QMU–July 2012"The last activity of the day was the Naked Scientists doing some fun experiments. I’m afraid I can’t do much justice to the proceedings but at some point I should be able to upload the video. What happens when you add an inflated balloon to liquid nitrogen? The balloon deflates. Compressing air rapidly onto some […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"The final lecture of the day was given by Dr Jim Wild from Lancaster University and Dr Chris Davis from STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on space weather. Jim explained the physics of the aurora borealis and why the Earth’s magnetosphere is so important to our survival and Chris talked about Solarwatch and how he is […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"The seventh lecture was with Dr Kevin Fong, who has a background in physics and medicine. He has worked with NASA. Dr Fong began his lecture by giving a brief biography. This included how he started off with a physics degree before moving into medicine and how the former was a great help with the […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"After lunch there was a discussion group with Dr Jonathon Hays. Proton mass comes from the strong force. Energy stored gets bigger and bigger as the quarks are moved apart. If it can become big enough more quarks are produced. If energy is left over you get mass. If the Higgs hadn’t been discovered it […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"The sixth lecture was given by Dr Robert Flack from the High Energy Physics Group at UCL. He is currently working on NEMO-3 and SuperNEMO both of which are double beta decay experiments. Double beta decay is currently the only way of measuring the mass of the neutrino. robflack@hep.ucl.uk Neutrinos are unique. They are detected […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"The fifth lecture (given before the momentous announcement on the 4th of July that the Higgs appeared to be found) was on the hunt for the Higgs Boson given by Dr Jonathon Hays from Imperial College. Dr Hays works on CMS at the LHC looking for the Higgs amongst other things (www.cms.cern.ch). There is no […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"The fourth lecture was given by Dr Emily Nurse from UCL. She has worked on experiments at the two largest particle accelerators in the world – ATLAS (part of the LHC) and the CDF experiment at the Tevatron at Fermilab. How do these experiments unlock the secrets of particles? Dr Nurse began her lecture by […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"
helen the hare 