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!