The Time I Spent a Week at The Royal Institution and Destroyed My Nails.

Phew, school is driving me insane but I thought I'd set some time aside to talk about a wonderful week I spent at the Royal Institution (RI) destroying my nails and my mind (for very different reasons). 

Rosetta and Philae Lander

I came off a trans-Atlantic flight and was excited for the next day. I was heading to the RI to spend a week doing an introduction to robotics course. While an aspiring astrophysicist the importance of the other sciences should not be ignored. Topics such as computer programming, robotics and geology are vital for understanding out universe. We need geology to understand other planets, asteroids and comets. We need computer programming to tell telescopes where to look in the sky. We need robotics to build the brilliant robots which travel to other planets, such as the Mars Rover or the Philae Lander which will try to land on the comet 67P in the next few months. Without the other disciplines astrophysics would be much harder to comprehend and it is easy to forget that while we call the subject astrophysics and label things as work physicists do and work biologists do, these subjects are all part of one massive subject: the natural world around us. 

Anyway, I arrived on Monday just before 10 o'clock, pushing the boundaries of being late (as I normally do) and sat down at a table with three girls. I came to know that they were in the year below me and quickly figured out they were all geeks like me (thank heavens). Astrid, Luciana and Mollie were brilliant to work with (and guys my part of the project is almost done, I promise) and between us we had a fantastic array of geeky t-shirts. But I think prize for the geekiest t-shirt goes to a boy who wore one in which pi was telling an imaginary number to get real and the imaginary number was retorting by telling pi to be rational. 

We got to work on our two projects before long, one was to build a robot which could eventually go underwater and use a claw to pick things up, the other was very free and my group decided to build a robotic hand. We soon discovered the menace of the week: the elements game. About 11 elements have been discovered at the RI and to promote this the Institution have come up within a game in which you have to find the elements on a massive periodic table while The Elements Song by Tom Lehrer plays in the background. Oh the tune was fun at first, but by the end of the week whenever it came on all forty of the teenagers in the room would wince and then share a collected laugh of 'thank goodness it's getting to everyone else too!' 

We named our underwater project Enterprise (because why not?!) and our robotic claw was dubbed S.P.O.C.K (Special Purpose Operating Colour Koordinator) . 

Enterprise Mark VI

We started off Enterprise with Mark I and I believe got to about mark XI or XV before we were done. We went easy to begin with, testing gear ratios and what materials from our LEGO kits floated best to begin with and expanded it to something which could eventually sink to the bottom of the pool and then resurface and then added a working claw to it! We controlled it with battery packs from the side lines and at the end of the week did a challenge to see who could pick up the most balls. And while the group who won (they'd named their robot a mix of a scorpion, lobster and crab I believe, though I can't quite remember how they combined the names into one ) retrieved about 14 balls, my group and I were rather proud of the 6 we got. We were so close to getting 7 but off all the times for the claw not to work that was one of them so we shared third place... Willingly of course. 

Our claw was another story. The head of the camp worked at one of the UK's big robotics universities and was doing research into robots that could be used to clear up nuclear waste and had promised any one who tried a claw some extra assistance. No one in my group had used LEGO before for building robots so were rather relying on a bit of assistance to get us started off, on Thursday morning (we had to be done by Friday morning at the latest) when half of the claw was assembled and half the arm was done he comes by our table and says '... That won't work the moment caused by the arm will be too big' (when I say 'moment' here I mean the physics kind, as in a turning force, though our robot actually working definitely made us have a moment) and takes the work I'd just spent two hours on to pieces in about three seconds.

I felt like crying because I hadn't considered moments and because he'd just deconstructed my child. However, he proceeded to help Mollie and Luciana building the claw while Astrid and I worked on the programming for S.P.O.C.K as we'd decided he would be an autonomous robot (i.e he would be able to work on his own without someone controlling him). We programmed S.P.O.C.K to search for a yellow object, pick it up, and move it to a different location before continuing his search.

S.P.O.C.K - My pride and joy

It took a lot of work but the incredible feeling when S.P.O.C.K picked up a yellow block, moved it and then kept searching for the next one was the most wonderful thing! This robot became our child for a week. Good Lord, it was so depressing when about two hours after getting S.P.O.C.K to work properly for the first time after all of our hard work building him (with a bit of help from our supervisor of course) we had to take him to pieces.

We had to disassemble Enterprise as well, I think all of the groups were crying inside as they tore apart their creations.

I left on Friday with many new skills learned and friends made and the sound of 'there's antimony, arsenic, aluminium, selenium and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium' ringing in my ears. 

While the week destroyed my finger nails (they're still recovering now) and drove me insane as I sat staring intensely at S.P.O.C.K thinking 'Why won't you work?!?' It was a brilliant experience which gave me the confidence to start a robotics club at my school for which I had 16 pupils show up! 

I recommend this course, and robotics in general, to people interested in science. Robotics has so many uses in biology, chemistry, physics, maths and in everyday life that this is well worth a look at. S.P.O.C.K could have been used for sorting your darks and lights in laundry, or getting rid of that flavour of Skittle you just can't stand. You may get into Robotics and find that you want to do a degree in it! (Which is a brilliant idea, we need as many people working in STEM as we can get).

Unfortunately this course is not free and I had the opportunity to go to it because I am a Faraday member of the RI, however membership for under 25s is only £15 a year and there are lots of opportunities for courses and lectures through that membership.

I even get the chance to apply for a Silver Crest award for my work during the week on Enterprise and S.P.O.C.K! (That is if I ever finish my part of the project...) 

Why We are Made of the Stars (and Why We Should Care).

When the Big Bang occurred and the elements were first created only three were actually constructed: hydrogen, helium and a little bit of lithium. This is known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. After a while ('a while' being about 400 million years), when everything had settled down a little bit, the hydrogen clumped together so densely that it condensed into a star, becoming plasma, and began nuclear fusion converting hydrogen into helium. 'The Pillars of Creation' in the Eagle Nebula is a fantastic example. Each pillar is made of gaseous hydrogen which is slowly but surely forming new stars. (That and it makes a pretty picture doesn't it.) 

 'The Pillars of Creation' - a stellar nursery

When all of the hydrogen has been converted into helium, the helium is then converted into another element heavier than helium. This nuclear fusion continues, creating elements such as carbon and oxygen. This is the process our Sun will go through. Some larger stars will be able to make elements all the way up until iron. The next element up from iron is too unstable and that is when a supernova occurs, sending all of the elements created flying out away from the remnants of the star. 

The element which makes up most of our body is oxygen (65%), followed by carbon (18%). A few other major ones are hydrogen (10%), nitrogen (3%), calcium (1.5%) and phosphorus (1%). All of these elements were created in the hearts of stars in nuclear fusion, so we really are made of the stars.

This is one of the things that I love knowing as I go through life. It helps me connect to the world around me. For me, there is something wonderful about knowing that you have something in common with the 300 billion stars which make up The Milky Way, even if they're so far away and so unattainable when you look up at the sky as I did tonight (As I do most nights actually).  

Newly formed star HD 142527 

Another thing which comforts me is this: When people die they are buried or cremated or how ever else they wish to be honoured once deceased, but the particles which make them up remain on the Earth. When our Sun becomes a Red Giant in about 5 billion years and swallows up the Earth, the elements which make up our bodies will eventually fly out into space as the Sun sheds its outer layers. These layers are made up of gas and dust, and gas and dust are what make up planets and nebulae and stars. So the atoms from our bodies will eventually come to be in places like The Pillars of Creation and make new stars. 

So we've come from the stars, are being sustained by them, and one day we will return to the stars and make beautiful things a new. 

If that's not a comforting thought, I'm not quite sure what is.  

R.I.P. to my incredible Grandma I. You lived life to the full, ate a wonderful amount of chocolate and custard creams, and we will remember you fiercely. 

The Explosive Power of Tan(90)

This is something I had to share. 

Today in Physics we were looking at Cosine, Sine and Tangent (Cos, Sin and Tan). For relevance, because our Physics teacher is thorough to say the least, we were working out what 0, 30, 45, 60 and 90 degrees of Cos, Sin and Tan are. 

A diagram of a Triangle

(On a side note, this is actually really interesting because Sin goes: 0, 0.5, 0.71, 0.87, 1. Cos does the exact opposite: 1, 0.87, 0.71, 0.5, 0! And by knowing Sin and Cos you can find Tan without any other pieces of data, which is awesome. The maths behind Sine, Cosine and Tangent is really cool and kind of mind blowing for anyone below GCSE, seriously it can really help you with Trigonometry. Certainly helped me clear up a few things which had really been bugging me.)

The cool thing about Tan(90) is that it's infinity. Tan is opposite/adjacent and as the triangle changes shape the value of the opposite grows and that of the adjacent decreases. This idea continues and something which is constantly getting bigger divided by something constantly getting smaller = infinity. (At least that's the rough idea but I may edit this when I have more maths knowledge. The important thing is that it equals infinity).

So when you put Tan(90) into a GCSE or above calculator MATH ERROR comes up, try it if you want to. When we were all testing whether this was true a girl from my class launched into this brilliant little anecdote. 

Her maths teacher had spent about five minutes convincing two girls in their class that if you put Tan(90) into your calculator the calculator would explode. On account of the fact that it couldn't deal with infinity, of course. The blast radius of the explosion is 5m so it's basically a hand grenade! So girls if you're ever in a tight spot, type in Tan(90) and throw the calculator then run. 

These two girls completely fell for it, and were asking questions like 'Why aren't we told this?! Lower years get given these calculators! It's dangerous!' The teacher's response was 'Well, we don't want to tell year sevens they could have that kind of power, do we?'

The entire class was cracking up behind them, knowing it was complete lies. But, apparently, what sold the performance was the fact that the teacher said all of this completely calmly, face completely blank. 

My entire Physics class were in tears. 

... Yeah we might be a class full of nerds. Just possibly. 

 Time I Met Brian Cox. 

So I've found that when it comes to Brian Cox there are two types of people; the people who love him and the people who hate him. There may be some people in the middle but I haven't found them yet. I am one of the people who loves him. 

I was lucky enough, through my dad's work and his general awesomeness, to go to the Royal Institution (RI) to be part of the audience for the filming of 'The Science Behind Doctor Who'... Now I'm a fan of Doctor Who, the first four seasons though, you can't just replace Donna with another sassy red head and change the Doctor at the same time (sorry Matt Smith) but I wasn't as interested in hearing whether Doctor Who could ever exist as I was to hear Brian Cox speak.

The Doctor and Brian Cox meet...

Because this is Brian Cox. The Brian Cox. The Brian Cox. The one who got me into astronomy and astrophysics in the first place! 

When it came to the evening we were going to the RI for the filming I was so excited I think my entire school probably knew that I was going. Wearing an ensemble of black boots, black jeans and a red tank top over which was hastily thrown the black blazer my mother had brought when I realised I wasn't dressed as formally as I needed to be, I entered the RI absolutely brimming with excitement. Everywhere there were scientists. I ended up being whisked away by a biologist who took me to meet this wonderfully insane chemist. While I feel awful that I can't remember his name, I most definitely remember his appearance: tall and lanky, wearing a slightly ruffled suit, with dark brown hair that stuck out of his head in wispy tuffs and a pair of huge glasses. He was juggling an iPad, a glass of red wine he nearly spilled on his clothes about three times, and two or three hors d'oeuvres of which I believe he managed to eat all three. As he was performing his marvellous trick of balancing an iPad and a wine glass in the same hand, he was excitedly telling me about membranes which form when water and oil mix and how we still don't know how proteins fold or why they fold or what tells them to fold but they still fold! He captured my attention for the next twenty minutes as he explained quick as the speed of light why I should take chemistry A level (if you are reading this, oh my brilliant acquaintance,  I am indeed doing Chemistry A level, though I doubt you would remember me). 

When we were called in to take our places for the filming I looked at the red cushy seat in front of me, not ten meters from the very spot where Brian Cox would be giving his lecture, and knew I would be on the edge of my seat. As we let the BBC set up and be professional, I started talking to a mathematician who later gave me his business card and said he would happily give a lecture at my school (something I still need to organise with the maths department a year on). 

After a BBC person in charge of filming had filmed us clapping and laughing, and clapping and laughing some more, they started to film. 

The entire experience was magical. 

The first thing that Brian did was begin his lines sounding like Sean Connery (making the audience burst out laughing) and the BBC to have to begin filming again. Then he went from explaining how time curved, to the search for alien life, back to time travel. We saw Dallas Campbell mess up an experiment before making various things explode to demonstrate Faraday's Law of Electromagnetic Conduction. We saw Charles Dance revert to a school boy as, with nought but a pair of safety goggles to save himself from danger, he turned a bunsen burner flame red, green and blue to show the presence of different metal ions. We sent Rufus Hound into The Eye of Harmony (the black hole which powers the TARDIS in Doctor Who). 

(A hilarious side story is that when Brian said he needed an assistant, me being a school girl, my hand shot up in the air as I yelled in my head 'I volunteer as tribute!'. My dad then pulled my hand down, saying 'Don't be silly', and I realised my mistake as Brian then called
Dallas Campbel to the stage who had obviously been picked before hand as he was one of Brian's friends. However I do have a suspicion that Brian saw me stick my hand up. I still don't know whether to be embarrassed or proud.) 

After the entire talk had been run through, and Brian had blown out the candle he'd been using the read Faraday's notes for one of the Christmas Lectures, the BBC had to decide what they wanted to refilm for where things had gone wrong or they wanted a different angle. Brian turned to the audience and said 'Does any one have any questions?' 

My hand shot up like an arrow. 

He picked me. 

I stood up, my mother quietly encouraging me to stand while my father quietly told me to sit down, and said in a loud but shaky voice 'What advice would you give to someone aspiring to do physics and astrophysics at University?' 

As Brian repeated my question and then answered it, telling me how important and vital maths was, he looked at me the entire time addressing the answer to me. I honestly think my mouth was open in shock. Here was one of my idols, one of my stars, the person who I'd seen on the TV, talking to me and answering a question that I'd asked. He didn't just say 'Do maths' and move on. He spent about five minutes carefully running through why we needed more physicists and how important it was to be a physicist and how maths was vital for that role. 

The rest of the filming was a rush for me. I leaned forward in my seat as if it was possibly for the words Brian was saying to diffuse into my skin if I tilted towards him enough. 

After the filming we took photos with the TARDIS (I believe it was the one used for filming on Doctor Who) I wanted to hang around. I'd been saying to some scientists before the lecture began how much I wanted to meet Brian and was hoping they'd pull through with something, as they'd told me they'd see what they could do. My parents, having convinced me there would be other opportunities and that it was getting late, were walking down the stairs with me when one of the scientists leaned over the bannister and yelled to me "Sophie! Do you want to meet Brian?" 

My response, I believe, was "Hell, yes!" as I sprinted back up the stairs and followed the scientist to the lecture theatre the talk had taken place in, my parents trailing behind us. As my mum handed me my copy of 'Why Does E=mc²' (which yes had been bought that day, but I proceeded to read with vigour) and the cover of my Force and Motion notes from Physics class (on which Isaac Newton sat proud) a boy about age eleven asked Brian why the speed of light was what it was (the speed of light being 299,792,458 m/s). As Brian replied that it was one of physics great mysteries all I could think was 'Oh God, I don't have a question like that for him to seem smart, I just want him to sign Isaac Newton's face!'

When he turned to me and said hi, before happily taking my book and notes cover to sign, he said "Good question by the way." This only helped increase my stuttering as I told him how inspirational he was to me and how he helped me get into astrophysics and how much I loved 'Wonders of the Solar System'. 

As he scribbled on my book he said 'So are you at university?'

I shook my head.

"A levels?"

I shook my head, then remembered I had the power of speech at my disposal. "No, GCSEs. But I'm thinking scientific A levels."

We talked a bit more as he signed my notes cover, adding at the bottom, with a smily face, a note which said 'Keep up the maths!'

Brian's Signature on my Force and Motion notes

Brian's Signature on 'Why does E=mc²?'

I thanked him profusely and left with my family, screeching first internally, then externally as I realised that I had just met Brian Cox. Even the thrill of walking passed Charles Dance was dimmed by such a realisation. As I hugged my dad he said good humouredly 'Oh, what have I done? She's gone to the dark side.' (I used to want to do A levels of French, Spanish, Latin and Ancient Greek. Much more to his liking than Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Further Maths. But that's a story for another time.)

So here I am, almost a year later. Doing Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Further Maths with aspirations of reading astrophysics at Cambridge.

So Brian, if you ever read this, I kept up the maths :).

The Time I did Work Experience in UCL's Astrophysics Department.

Earlier this summer I had the immense privilege of going to University College London and spending a week in their astrophysics department. It was quite possibly the coolest week of my life.

I like UCL, I go there for Friday Night Lectures which are designed for sixth formers (16-18 year olds). They are free, they even provide us with biscuits and cups of water (what more does one need from life?), and the topics range from how the inner ear works to antimatter and it's role in our lives. You don't have to book seats or anything, you just need to show up early enough to get a seat before they all fill up (there have been several cases of people sitting on the stairs or standing in the back)

So when the head of Physics at my school found this work experience placement opportunity and showed it to me, I was eager to apply. Having been rather ruthlessly rejected from the National Physics Laboratory earlier in the year, I was hoping desperately for success as my summer was looking a bit bare in terms of work.

We were supposed to receive word back from UCL on the 4th of May, and on the fourth I received an email... saying that the astrophysics department needed more time to decide who they wanted. This was  the week before my GCSEs started and I may have started stress baking (my brother was very happy).
On the day my exams started, the first one being French, I received another email while doing some last minute cramming and opened it on reflex and as the page loaded all I could think was 'It's another rejection. I can't take another rejection before I start my GCSEs!'

I may have started hyperventilating when I saw my application had been successful. So my mother thought I was having a panic attack when I phoned her and then I had to calm down and focus on revising the various forms of savoir.

UCL was one of the most incredible experiences ever. Not least because of the people I was working with. When I think physics and space I tended to think of it being filled with geeky guys with glasses, that whole sheebang, so I was assuming I was the only girl who had gotten in. When I arrived on Monday to my astonishment, amusement and delight all four of the people whose applications had been successful were girls. It was brilliant! Out of more than 80 applicants, in which the ratio of applications had been 2:1 (girls to boys) all four of the successful applicants were female. So much for it being a patriarchal society, look at the girl power!

M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy (Image constructed by Me)

The girls I met were awesome. Diya, Rishara and Laura were all in the year above me and so when it came to the tricky maths they were very helpful in helping me so I didn't end up weeping onto my calculator (we also started looking up physics jokes and found one of the dirtiest ones I've ever seen, but that's a story for another time).

The astrophysicists who were supervising us were Dr. Jay Farihi, Marco Rocchetto who was Jay's PhD student and Nicola Baccichet who was doing a PhD in instrumentation. We did work on processing images so that we could make a short film from images taken by telescopes. The images were taken in Red, Green, Blue, H-Alpha and Luminosity so we had to piece it all together to get the clearest image we could using GIMP which is fairly easy to manoeuvre and is free to download. When we had each made an image of M51, two galaxies which from our point of view overlap (the swirl is one galaxy and the circular extension on the bottom of the whirlpool is another galaxy) and had made a clip of a star going supernova in M82 we moved on to more complex calculations.

While working on finding out how far M100 was from our planet using cepheid stars (stars which change in luminosity and size in the same way that a pot of boiling water begins to rattle with the lid on and them settles down once you take the lid off and then begins rattling once again once the lid is placed back on) I had the chance to experience what it is like for a PhD student at UCL as I was working in a room full of PhD students. From cosmology to radio astronomy to remains of planets crashing into white dwarves to galaxy formation, there was so much amazing astronomy and astrophysics taking place it made my head spin!

Along the way we got the pleasure of eating lunch with astrophysicist Amelie Saintonge, her work was on how galaxies developed, who was thrilled that there were young enthusiastic women who wanted to do astrophysics at university, and had been one of the people to help go through our applications. I was thrilled that there are pioneering women in astrophysics right now.

The Radcliffe Telescope (18/24-inch Double Refractor)

We also went out to lunch with astrophysicist Andrew Pontzen who was working on what dark matter is. I felt quite sorry for him because we asked him so many questions that I don't know how he actually had time to eat his lunch. We started off with the simple things, what is dark matter and dark energy and ended up talking about eternal inflation and how it could have spawned our universe and Boltzmann Brains (which are quite freaky things). Having seen him give a fantastic lecture on what dark matter might be, I may have been worshipping the ground he walked on (just slightly), and luckily he was very allowing and didn't get irritated when I came back the next day to ask him more questions.

Along the way, the three other girls and I got to observe radio astronomers and were given a tour around the ULO (University London Observatory). I never wanted it to end! On Friday I just wanted to come back and do more on Monday and I seem to recall telling Jay I would 'sort and count paperclips if it meant I could come back'.

The week was incredible and helped me cement the fact that I want to spend my life exploring the universe. If you're a sixteen to eighteen year old who lives near London and wants some interesting and eye-opening work experience in the summer I highly suggest applying for this. If I could apply again I would but I don't think we're going to be allowed to (even if we did buy Jay, Marco and Nicola chocolate to try and bribe them into letting us stay for another week).

My advice when applying for this? Your covering letter is vital. Jay said that we were almost completely chosen from our covering letters, he was American and so didn't understand the school system so my predicted grades meant nothing to him. Jay and two others went through all of the letters and all three of them had picked two of us by our covering letters and two of them had both picked the other two, again by their covering letters. You really have to put your all into the covering letter, no spelling or grammar mistakes.

Also makes sure you put the correct year. I accidentally said I was applying during 2013 instead of 2014...

The time I Met Astrophysics as a Friend. 

So.

'1,429,400,000 km away'. What does it mean?

Kudos to anyone who's got it already, it's the distance that Saturn is from the sun.

I got into astronomy and astrophysics in a bit of a weird way (at least I think it's kind of weird). I wasn't one of those 'Space is cool and Rockets are awesome!' children, in fact until I was about 13 space terrified me. All I could think about when I thought space was 'empty'. There is nothing there! It used to scare the hell out of me. How could there be Earth, and then the atmosphere, and then just nothing?! And then I would turn to the idea of how we could be the only living things in the universe and my mind would freak out even more and I'd panic and think Oh my god we are alone... 

So yeah, space and I weren't exactly childhood buddies. Then one day my brother was watching Brian Cox's 'Wonders of the Solar System' and I sat down next to him because I was kind of curious as to what this TV show was. It was then that space and I collided and boy did sparks fly. It might have been the dramatic music or the amazing footage from the Cassini Spacecraft or just the fact that I'm an emotional teenager, but as the TV screen showed a dramatic flyby of Saturn, its rings creating delicate shadows on the planet's surface, I fell in love.

So I watched the rest of the program and Brian Cox started talking about Enceladus, this tiny little moon (1/6.8th the size of our moon) which orbits in Saturn's E-ring. The incredible thing about this moon is that it is 1,429,400,000 km away from the sun and it has liquid water under its surface, and we first notice said liquid water when it was first spotted in a photograph from Cassini. A moon in our solar system way outside the 'goldilocks zone' (where water is liquid) and there are ice geysers on it!

I needed to know more. So I went on Wikipedia and got from Enceladus to Plank Time in about ten minutes (the way one does with Wiki) and was suddenly bombarding my Physics teacher with questions about viscosity and gravitational pull (much to her delight).

School broke up for summer as it tends to and I wanted to read a bit so I sent the Head of Physics an email asking for book recommendations and, I kid you not, while I was out one day he brought a massive stack of Astronomy and Astrophysics books to my house and gave them to my shocked little brother who had answered the door.

And from there I pretty much spent the summer reading and putting post-it notes in various Astronomy books only to have to give them back to the library before any of my post-it note questions could be answered.

And that is how my love affair with Astronomy and Astrophysics began!

So when I say '1,429,400,000 km away' I'm talking about the incredible distance away from the sun that liquid water exists. Because it's basically what set me off on my journey to boldly go where no one has gone before.