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"After a mid-morning break Dr Potzen led a discussion group. The LHC is looking for dark matter. It detects and adds up energy/momentum and “investigates” the missing stuff. The history of Dark Matter goes back to Einstein’s General theory of Relativity. In the integration a positive constant appeared indicating a push outwards due to gravity. […]
Read more "The Naked Scientists-June 2012"The third lecture was given by Dr Chris North from the University of Cardiff and the European Space Agency about the Herschel and Planck space observatories (telescopes that study long wavelength light from the early universe). Chris.North@astro.cf.ac.uk Herschel and Planck are Europe’s cosmic explorers (http://herschel.cf.ac.uk/ and http://planck.cf.ac.uk/). They were launched in 2009. Herschel carries the […]
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helen the hare 