Oxford Day Five: Design & Make Task and Departure

Again, I am writing this post over a week after the end of the Headstart course simply because I've been pre-occupied with catching up with school work that I missed over the week. However, the last day was a great day so I thought it's better late than never and I'm going to share my last day at Oxford with you.

Breakfast was as usual and I ate close to nothing. Afterwards we had to pack up our bags and drop them off in the Porter's Lodge along with our keys, meaning no more key checks - it was the beginning of the end.

We then walked over to the Materials department for our last day of activities. We had a team design project involving the usual task of designing and building something which could protect an "Egg Telescope" from a fall from space to Earth, or in our case, from a 7 meter drop. I managed to conjure up this idea of having a tetrehedral tubular paper cage which help the egg in suspension inside of it due to strings in tension. I've actually done various "engineering" activities like this before in the past, but this one was slightly difference as a fast decent was advantageous, so we also added a small parachute to only slightly reduce velocity. We had a set amount of Materials Pounds that we could spend and it was possible to gain monetary sponsorship from our course directors and student mentors. Our group managed to get this guy called Jon Connolly to join our team in manufacturing our egg vessel & parachute. He actually proved to be a worthwhile investment and our design proved to be highly successful with no egg cracking. We then had presentations to share our designs with the rest of the group. There were some incredibly impassioned presentations and I was astounded by just how good some people were at public speaking. In the end, scores were added up and turns out our team won! Yipee. We each got a commemorative Mansfield College mug as a prize which I will treasure till the end of time.

Next were some more presentations including the winners of the poster competition which unfortunately we didn't win, and finally our certificates for attending this Headstart course.

This was the time we made our final walk through University Parks, back to Mansfield to collect up our bags and say our goodbyes. I actually had a 2 hour wait before my coach back so I was one of the last ones to leave the college. Here are my final thoughts about the course in bullet points as I'm boring of writing in paragraphs:

• It has made me realise that perhaps materials is not the university course for me, but I still find it utterly fascinating.
• Gay bacon is nice!
• I loved how we actually had a decent amount of free time. I anticipated homework to do or other such more structured activities in the evenings but we could do whatever which was great. 
• It was great to be surround by so many like-minded people, make random science jokes, spew out random science facts and for people to actually find them interesting - wow I sound so lame. 
• The people came from all over the country but were all incredibly friendly, intelligent and talented. 
• Punting is fun! 
• It's a shame the course wasn't longer as once you finally get to know everyone's names, it's the end of the course
• I can't do without my veggies
• I weighed myself on the Friday we got back and I managed to lose 1.5kg of weight (or mass correctly speaking) over the previous 4 days which is absolutely insane as I cannot remember a time in my life when I have ever even lost weight - I love food too much. 
• Being short in Oxford has its advantages as there were slanty ceilings in our halls.

Okay that's all I can think of for now. This is actually such an exciting time of year as I'm going on another course in Eton starting on Tuesday! This meeting even more new people which is always fun. I find sustaining friends is hard but making friends is fun. However, it's going to be a completely different vibe as there's going to be over 100 of us studying a plethora of subjects. I think I'm going to attempt to keep a diary log of my time there too on this blog as I love documenting everything. It's going to hard to sustain it though as I only managed to keep the Oxford blogs going for 3 days before I succumbed to tiredness and stopped writing them the day of occurrence. Let's just see how it goes? 

Oxford Day Four: Posters, Materials and Free Time

This day has been written retrospectively on Saturday 22nd June as the accumulative effect of sleep deprivation over the last few days has taken its toll and I could not force myself to stay awake to write these blog posts on the actual days of occurrence. However, I thought as I well I might as well write it now as I'm going to forget most of the details sooner or later.

Breakfast was as usual although this time I skipped cereal all together and instead went for toast. I stole a little pot of jam to take home as they looked really cool. We then walked to the materials department for our first activity of the day, which was poster making for our group. Our poster was on "Catalytic Wizardry" and the article we had to review was utterly confusing.

Afterwards we had a lab sessions where we tested the tensile strength of steels rods with two different carbon contents (0.18% and 0.8% I think from my memory) until failure on an apparatus which recorded and plotted data with respect to force and area. We then had a really interesting chat regarding first year course content for materials, as well as introducing to us some of the basics of metallurgy, such as dislocations, work hardening, annealing, tempering, iron-carbon phase diagrams, characteristics and properties of pearlite and ferrite. I found this session incredibly interesting and made me really want to study materials. I surprised myself with how much I knew about steel already from studying resistant materials, but it was fantastic to get into the real nitty gritty of why heating up steel of a certain carbon content will give it certain mechanical properties instead of just memorising it as a fact that that will happen.

Again it was a brown buffet lunch at the Holder Cafe at the materials department and I had no appetite.

The afternoon was absolutely amazing as we had free time (yippee). We first went punting again as I didn't really get to punt much on my first time two days ago. I was initially apprehensive but it turned out we had the dream team on our punt and I think we did pretty well, apart from the part where we almost died from almost crashing under a bridge after we decided to hold onto another group's pedalo for momentum. After cruising around and harassing some geese, I managed to park our punt (badly) before heading off to our sanctuary - Tescos. I co-bought some strawberries and then group headed off to university parks. We chilled a bit before the boys started playing football and us girls chatted before heading off to view the physics department.

The evening included our formal conference dinner so the girls got dressed up in pretty dresses and the guys in their white and blue stripy shirts. We all politely sipped juices out of wine glasses in the JCR for the dinner reception. The atmosphere was lovely, although I was feeling particularly lethargic at this stage due to the warm surroundings and dim lighting. The actual dinner included posh pate and pickles for starters; venison, potato and root vegetables for mains; chocolate brownie and ice cream for pudding and lastly coffee and chocolates to round off the meal. By this point I was feeling absolutely awful and ate very little of this meal which pained me. I donated my entire dessert to a good cause so at least that wasn't wasted.

Afterwards was suppose to be a DVD night, but alas, there was no DVDs. Instead we had more circle time, which I was not feeling. I decided to have an early-ish/not really night and just head up to my room to sleep.

Oxford Day Three: JET and quiz time

Today was another fantastic day in Oxford. Again the breakfast began the day which was the same cereal and juice. This time I decided to have two packs as I was feeling particularly hungry, which did not turn out to be a good idea as I drenched my Alpen in milk. I don't usually drink any cow's milk at home so throughout the day I had awful stomach pains, which probably means I am mildly lactose intolerant. Anyway, that is probably TMI.

First we had a lecture on Nanomaterials by Jude Britton, a PhD student. It was an interesting lecture as she talked us through what a nanomaterial is (a material that is one billionth of a meter) and why they are so useful - properties quantise, can be used in drugs and surface area increases exponentially.  We talked about some of the techniques that her department uses to observe these tiny, tiny particle, such as Scanning Electron Microscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy and Scanning Probe Microscopy. Her research group covers various nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes, chalcogenides and graphene.

Next was a lecture delivered by David regarding presentation skills.

Before lunch, we finished off our research in preparation to our visit to JET at Culham. Lunch again was disappointing, but luckily they had watermelon - my favourite - and I had slices of that.

Afterwards, we went on the coach to JET. At this time I was feeling pretty nauseous but I kept this to myself. We were equipped with hard hats and entered the facility. We could not view the actual JET as they were preparing it for running or something like that, so we just walked around the big hall with all the different spare parts. We viewed the control centre as well as the training facilities for the operators of the robotic controls for inside the Tokamak. I have more written up about nuclear fusion from Oxford Day One, so please check that out if you are interested into why we visited the centre.

Dinner included some nice steak, potatoes and some vegetables for once: courgette. Afterwards was our quiz night and I was part of the Cumberbitchezzzz/Jar Enthusiasts. We didn't win but it was fun whilst it lasted. Next we played some truth or dare which ended up with me in a bin and  then an awful chair-moving-around game. Now I am tired and going to sleep.

Oxford Day Two: Lab, Lectures and Punting!

Day two started off with myself being very tired and cold as I don't think the radiator was on overnight. We trotted off to breakfast in the chapel at 8.00am sharp and it was not great. It was a cold breakfast and I just had a bowl of Special K and a miniature croissant, leaving me feeling empty. We started actual work today and we walked to the Material Science department. The department is a horribly designed (in my opinion), grey and ugly concrete building with textured walls that just looked like gravel had been stuck onto it.The only feature I liked was that there were slight gaps between the edge of the staircases and the walls, seriously.

Our first lecture was on "The Material Science of Fusion Power", delivered by Professor Steve Roberts which I enjoyed. He talked to us about how nuclear fusion could be the future and the end of the global energy crisis as only 10g of deuterium and 15g of tritium are required to meet the entire lifetime energy needs of a citizen in a developing country. He talked to us about the reactors that need to be built in order for the fusion to occur and the challenges that need to be overcome before we can viably utilise nuclear fusion as an energy source. The reactor needs to be able to withstand temperatures of 150-200 million Kelvin as well as not form very radioactive isotopes when hit by high-energy neutrons that are released when the fusion occurs. Turns out the elements that do not form radioactive isotopes include C, Si, Fe, V, Cr, Ta, W, which is not that bad as steel is made from Fe and C. Next we moved onto talking about the JET, a nuclear fussion reactor in the Culham Centre and the ITER, which is currently being built in the South of France, which is of larger scale, but not a power station. Overall, this talk was very interesting as it was heavily physics based and is finding a solution to a problem which will profoundly effect everyone in the future.

After break, where we were not watered or fed we had to pay for food and drink in the department cafe, we had a talk regarding interviews and attemping to solve potential Oxford, Material Science questions.

Our next lecture was on superconductors, which as slightly harder to understand, but again, very interesting. Dr Susie Speller discussed what they are, their uses before focusing specifically on NbTi, a low temperature superconductor. She talked about the problems with the movement of flux lines dissipating energy so in order to get high currents, optimal pinning for normal defects that is the same size and spacing of field lines are required. Once this issue had been sorted, we discussed why small grains and high density is required, thus through repeated mechanical deformation and heat treatment, a perfect balance between uniformity and grain size is reached to optimise the properties of the superconductor for the applications. Of course, in order to create wires of super conductor, a wire of NbTi core, surrounded by Nb foil and a Cu stabiliser are extruded. 100s of these tiny filaments are used for wire fabrication. Next we discussed high temperature superconductors, specifically YBCO which are hard to make as they are often ceramics, meaning that they are very brittle. The crystal grain boundaries also need to be in the right direction, and this is measured using electron back scattering diffraction to show grain structure. Next we talked about even more issues, even once we have fabricated wire or ribbon, it is hard to join so different joints are also tested. A slightly confusing lecture, but it emphased how materials science is all about making new materials to solve problems and they definitely had plenty of problems along the way.

Next was lunch at last which was our worst meal yet -  a cold buffet where all the food were various shades of brown - brown sausage rolls, beige potato wedges, sand coloured sandwiches...

After lunch was our first practical session where we extracted chlorophyll from spinach and made raspberry puree to create our own dye-sensitised solar cells to see which ones were the most efficient in energy conversion. It was great to do something practical, although right at the end of the write up, our computer decided to crash and I lost all the work I had painstakingly done. Luckily we managed to type it all up again in 5 minutes at the end.

Next we walked back to Mansfield to attend a lecture by two Oxford graduates who currently work at BP. They talked about how amazing their jobs are and the usual spiel.

Afterwards we had our chapel dinner which was chili con carne on rice with chips. It seems that the catering company has some sort of vendetta against vegetables as I don't think I've eaten any so far during my two days at Mansfield. I poured some cranberry juice out to drink and a male dinner lady shouted at me saying the juice is only for breakfast.

After dinner we went punting in the river which was very beautiful as the weather was great and the sunset was lovely. Our student mentor punted us around for most of the course but I did have a go and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. Luckily no one fell into the river, although we did have a rogue finalist attacking us in the river. There were a few punting sticks that got stuck on the river bed and some people were also soaked from splashes.

Afterwards we sped walked to Tesco Metro, the most important place in town. The boys stocked up on sweets and I bought some toothpaste as the mini hotel toothpaste I took was running out. A guy was getting arrested outside Tesco as he was very drunk and causing havoc.

We returned back to Mansfield and got shouted at for too many people being on the lawn. The sacred lawn is only for crochet players!  We then decided to migrate to the common room where it was eerily quiet before some more people joined us for name and fact learning, magic tricks, hand games and general bonding time.

Today/yesterday was a fantastic day and it's great to get to know more people better. Looking forward to tomorrow/later today!

Oxford Day One: Arrival

Today is my first day at Oxford for my Materials Science Headstart course. I'm going to make it brief as it's already 11.30pm and I should really be asleep!

I travelled here my coach at 11.10am, but the coach arrived slightly later than scheduled so I was in Oxford at one. The journey was pretty standard except I did feel a bit travel sick during it, but I just slept through the most of it so it was okay.

Something that I immediately noticed upon arrival was that Oxford is not as stereotypically as "pretty" or "quaint" as Cambridge - the architecture is much less homogeneous. There are far more typical 70s concrete buildings which some may say are ugly. There are also less cyclists as the city centre is not pedestrianised like in Cambridge.

I then directed myself to the college I will be staying at for the next 5 days - Mansfield College. I actually really like this college as it is not too claustrophobic as the site is not particularly small. We are also allowed to walk on the quad grass which is pretty rare for Oxford colleges. The student mentors who attend Mansfield emphasised how it is the friendly college and I have felt that vibe during my short time of being here.

Anyway, I arrived at Mansfield pretty early, so I decided to sit by the quad and read some of this library book that I've renewed about 5 times as I keep putting off reading it. Then once few more people had arrived, I got my key from the Porter's Lodge and went to dump my bags in my room A14. Turns out that someone else had accidentally mistaken their bag for mine, but I managed to retrieve it in the end.

We then congregated in the Junior Common Room and a boy/girl split was immediately apparent. After some socialising, we had two lectures regarding course rules, guidelines, blah blah blah, before starting our first actual activity that involved some thinking - "guestimating". We were separated into groups of four and had to "guestimate" the answers to some potentially unsolvable questions, including how many atoms would there be if a solid football was made from bucky ball, how many packets of crisps are eaten in the UK each year and how many golden eagles are needed to lift an elephant - the answer was 3500 if you are wondering.

Next we had a short break before a talk on Year in Industry and our dinner. The dinner was a bit disappointing to say the least, simply because when I last went on a trip to Oxford to Somerville College, the food was outstanding. I had chicken with a white sauce, roasted potatoes and sweet potato and a yogurt for dessert. The lack of vegetables was a bit concerning. I also got a tiny portion so I am still hungry whilst typing this up.

After dinner we had a tour around Oxford which was very lovely as the weather was surprisingly warm. We awkwardly walked into colleges, looked at their quads, walked out and repeated several times at various different colleges around Oxford. During this tour, I got to see more of Oxford and some parts are very beautiful. There were some houses painted in various quirky colours that caught my attention. We then made an all important trip to Tesco where one guy on our course almost got pooed on by a bird.

Lastly we just chilled outside playing Irish Snap illegally on the perfectly manicured lawn until the sun set and I wandered back into my room to write this blog post. The first day has been welcoming. I feel like I've done a lot of nothing today so looking forward to doing some more work and getting to know everyone better tomorrow

Night!

Why does boiling water have a lower splashy sound compared to cold water when it is being poured?

During study leave for my AS exams, I have made myself plenty of cups of tea. Something that caught my attention and made me curious was that when you pour boiling water for a cup of tea into a mug, the splashing sound that is created is lower in pitch than if you were to pour cold water.

After typing this question into Google, I did not manage to find a conclusive answer to this conundrum, so I decided to do some research myself. Here a series of questions that I asked myself when trying to work out the reason behind the different splashy sounds.

Why are we hearing a splashy sound in the first place?
I did a quick Google search and found this article by NASA's Earth Observatory: How do Raindrops Make Sound Underwater? The sound generated when a splash of water being poured into a mug is pretty much the same sort of idea as when a raindrop hits a puddle so this article was very useful. The article states that "there are two components to the sound generated by a raindrop splash:  the splat (impact) of the drop onto the water surface and then the subsequent formation of a bubble under water during the splash".

What causes variation in pitch?
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency of the vibration that causes the sound. Therefore, the higher the frequency, the higher pitched the sound emitted. Also in this particle, they also mentioned the Minnaert Resonance, the acoustic resonance frequency of a single bubble in an infinite domain of water. Obviously the water already in my mug is not an infinite domain of water, but if we ignore the effects of the mug, I reckon Minnaert's equation can still be used. It stated that the frequency of the sound emitted depends on bubble radius, local pressure, local water density and a geophysical constant.

Which one of these variables is causing the variation in pitch? 

• Bubble Radius

From my initial observations, I did not think there was any variation in bubble radius with changing temperature. However, then I thought about it a bit more and realised that water is more "runny" when it is hotter. In more scientific terms, water has a lower viscosity at higher temperatures, due to less hydrogen bonding. Therefore I concluded that at higher temperatures, the bubble radius must be smaller - is this a correct assumption to make?

• Local Pressure

I was mostly pouring the water into my mugs of tea at the same spot in the kitchen so there was probably no significant change in local pressure in the ambient space. Pressure, therefore, becomes a constant.

• Local water density

Water density decreases as temperature increases, so with hotter water, there is a lower local water temperature.

What is my conclusion?
As temperature increases, the bubble radius decreases as it has a lower viscosity. However, local water density decreases as temperature increases, which is not any use as both decreases will cancel each other out algebraically. Perhaps I need to consider the constants or maybe bubble radius decreases less than the decrease in density, so the decrease in density is more significant? In conclusion, I haven't really come to a conclusion! I will continue pondering about this conundrum in the morning and will report back when I have found a decisive conclusion!