Emma Wills

Former blog contributor

Emma

Course: MSCi Physics

Hope in The Daily Mail comments…

MSCi Physics

The medical research that is reported on in the news is generally rubbish—there is rarely any mention (and certainly never any critique) of what kind of research the stories are based on or how they fit into the overall picture of health research. Important studies (meta-analyses and negative results) are not reported in favour of easy stories that proclaim ‘red meat is bad’ or ‘this vitamin is good’ and are soon replaced by other stories claiming the exact opposite.

But you probably knew that. This blog isn’t about these things—and it isn’t even about the contents of an essay I recently finished looking at the rhetoric of how health and medical research is reported.

Happy Easter!

MSCi Physics

I’ve finally finally finally finished my last lab report!

Labs this year have not been fun, which is a shame because last year I actually enjoyed them, and felt like I was improving and learning things. Not so much this year.

Oh well—I’ve filled out a very angry feedback form, so with any luck the structure of third year labs might change in the future. And they’re over now! Onwards to Easter, chocolate and revision.

This year I’m feeling a lot calmer about exams in general—not because I feel any more prepared (!) but because revision over Easter is something I’ve been doing for the past five years and is now the most routine of routines.

Master’s Projects :0

MSCi Physics

A couple of weeks ago, the MSci projects for next year were announced for us to choose from!

MSci projects are projects that you do in the fourth year if you are taking an integrated Physics Masters, though I think there is a lot of overlap in the projects with regular Master’s projects—for people who come into Imperial just for the year.

They are pretty exciting— I think you have to log in to see the choices on the website, but I took a sneaky screenshot:

As you can see they cover pretty much every Physics topic. The actual names of the projects are like ‘A Search for Dyson Spheres and Cool Astronomical Bodies using the Wide field Infrared Survey Explorer’, ‘Physics beyond the Standard Model at the LHCb experiment… ?’

Chance to name a satellite?!

MSCi Physics

Imperial’s Vehicle Design Society are currently in the process of designing and building a CubeSat—a small and relatively cheap satellite that will be Imperial’s first ever student satellite.

 It’s not just going to be any old CubeSat either— it is going to be designed to aid search and rescue by locating distress signals, and will have the highest resolution (1.5m per pixel) of any CubeSat to date. There is currently a network of satellites to designed to locate and detect distress signals, but these were developed in the 70s and haven’t been updated since. The main aim of this project is to show that this system can be improved upon with minimal investment.

I <3 London

MSCi Physics

This weekend my parents came down, and we spent the weekend being tourists. We went to Chinatown to see some of the Chinese New Year decorations, had a tour round the Globe theatre, and explored Primrose Hill. There is so much to do in London that it’s always really easy to entertain visitors!

Last week was pretty busy as I was ill, writing my extended essay and lab report, it was pancake day, my housemate’s birthday, a Great Gatsby party on Wednesday, and Oscar, one of my old housemates came back from Germany where he is taking a year abroad to see everyone.

The Standard Model (of love)

MSCi Physics

Often people will say they don’t understand my blogs, so this one is split into three bits (imitating nature as we shall see) depending on how much physics you care to know.

Bit one: the standard model

The standard model is a theory about our best knowledge of particle physics to date, and it includes a toolkit of particles with which you can build a universe from. Each of these particles has different properties, but there are lots of patterns and links between them (just like the periodic table in chemistry). There are two types of particles overall- the ones that make up stuff– the matter particles, and the ones that make the stuff do stuff– the ones that carry the forces.

Internships…

MSCi Physics

Since I want to do science communication, there aren’t that many long-term internships that I am actually interested in, at least not compared to people who want to be various shades of banker. My boyfriend wants to work in insurance though, so I’ve seen two pretty different sides to applications for internships and work experience.

Both have their pros and cons—science communication is a very diverse field so it can be hard to find places that take interns, whereas it is easy to find a list of insurance companies with open summer schemes, but the applications for these are normally completely noxious.

Science & Art

MSCi Physics

Tonight I went to a talk by the Physics department’s artist-in-residence Geraldine Cox. I’d somehow never been to one of her talks or exhibits before, though I had seen some of her paintings around Blackett.

I was actually kind of sceptical about her work at the start of the talk, because although I love poetry and plays and novels and all those kind of English-y ‘arty’ things, I am not really comfortable with ‘art’ in general—paintings and sculptures and such. My knowledge of art amounts to knowing that Monet might have been able to see UV light after he had surgery for his cataracts, and that that might have made his later paintings more blue, and also that Turner did some good sea.

Happy January!

MSCi Physics

To start with, here is a picture of a strange quark holding a glass of champagne:

This is my second week back at Imperial after Christmas, and this term is looking set to be a brilliant one. For a start, I have only one lecture course this term, as all my options happened to be last term. This lecture course is called ‘Physics of the Universe’ and is about particle physics and astroparticle physics, and the lecturer is a completely inspiring man who literally flies out from CERN to teach us, and who you can just tell absolutely adores his job.

Maxwell’s Snowflakes

MSCi Physics

 Only one day, one tutorial and one lecture to go before Christmas holidays! We had our house dinner yesterday, which was awesome, but this blog is on something a bit different…

Basically, I was trying to listen to a lecture on matter reacting to magnetic fields, when I noticed a great tweet by symmetry mag showing their paper snowflakes in the shape of famous scientists. They look amazing, but are pretty intricate, and I don’t have a craft knife—also I was pretty sure I could make them even more nerdy, so I decided to come up with my own science inspired snowflakes.

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