St. Als Transition Year student. :)

Monday: Today is my first day of work experience. When I got into UL I went to Maria Quinn's office. She introduced me to John Sweeney and I got a tour of the labs. When we went into the first year physics lab I was introduced to Eamon Campbell. He had a class at the time and he showed me the vernier microscope that they were using. I looked at a pencil line and my ring under the microscope and it looked amazing!! I could see loads of tiny silver specs from the lead and with my ring I could see tiny scratches. Then at 11 am when I finished my tour I visited Eamonn again and I did a laboratory experiment “measuring gravity (g) by free fall”. I really enjoyed this as I could do the experiment myself and it wasn't teachers showing me the experiment in school. When I was finished the experiment I went for lunch. After lunch I went to John Sweeney. We went to the computer room and using the results from my experiments we plotted this graph in excel:
John then showed me how to blog my weeks work.Then at 3pm I had environmental chemistry with Jimmy Kelly and 2 other transition year students Ailbhe and Leah who are twins. Jimmy showed us how all the equipment in that lab is used.

Tuesday: I started at 10am today so before my class I went for a swim in the 50m pool. My lab was scheduled in the Health Science building which meant crossing the wobbly bridge! For this lab session I was with Mary Barrett. Leah, the other transition year student was also with me. In this class we dissected a rat!!! At the start I was hesitant but it wasn't too bad. We cut open the rat's stomach and I could see the heart, lungs, kidney... every thing!! Near the end of the class one of the assistants showed us how to take out the brain. It was a lot smaller then I expected and it was kinda unpleasant and we could even hear the skull cracking.When we finished the lab we went back over the bridge for lunch. Afterwards, we attended an Enviormental Science Lecture with Dr. Tom O'Dwyer. When we finished I joined the Equine students for a lab. We were testing for equine influenza in chicken eggs. When that class finished it was time to go home. Second day finished! :(
Wednesday I spent my morning in the Health Science building. I was participating in the Leaving Certificate biology practicals with Dr.Audrey O'Grady and her students. During lunch I sat in on a mock Law trial. This was very interesting and there is a great facility for the court session. After lunch I did chemistry pedagogy lab. This was a class with Dr.Sarah Hayes and Maria Munroe. We also did some shaping/bending of glass. I enjoyed that class and it was finished at 4 pm that was my third day over!!
ThursdayI spent my morning with Mary Barret and Dr.Wynette Reddington. First I was with Mary and I had a Histology Lab with her. Then I had a tour of the labs in the materials & surface science institute (MSSi) with Wynette. I saw many different research set-ups using various equipment. For example the high resolution electron microscope,XRD !!
After Lunch I was in the chemistry lab with Jimmy Kelly. We were looking at chemicals and equipment that is used in the chemistry labs. I conducted an experiment using a pipette and other equipment. I enjoyed the day and when I was finished my experiment I was finished for the day!!
Friday: Today was my last day of work experience:( I was with John today and we were in the physics research labs. We also went down to the F1 day for TYs. It was an all Ireland competition where schools across Ireland built and designed their own F1 car. There were races and we watched a few. When we were finished we went back to the labs and john showed me a wind turbine and how it works. He also showed me how the back of my fridge works and an experiment where you remove oxygen or hydrogen from water and it forms a gas. At the end of the day I did some work on the blog and I went home.

I really enjoyed the week and would like to thank Maria Q, Maria M, Mary, John, Jimmy, Eamonn, Tom, Jackie, Audrey, Sarah, and Wynette who helped me during the week. It was a great experience!

Laurel Hill Transition Year Student

Day One - Monday 7th of February .
Monday morning at 8:45 i rushed out the door with my brother. We arrived at Ul at exactly 9 o clock. After circurling the car park a couple of times we parked and headed in the direction of the physics department. I reached the main reception and soon found Maria Quinn the co - ordinator of the physics department.We set off and i got a quick tour of the physics department. At about half 9 we arrived at John Sweeneys office. John is the Senior technical officer and showed me around for the week. John brought me into all the labs and showed me the different apparatus in the Optics , Energy and Physics labs. We then met with John kelly and went to the paddocks for a tea break and Eammon arrived shortly after. After tea John and I returned to the optic lab which John was preparing for a lab during the week . There was 4 experiments set up and he showed me each one .There was still some setting up to be done with the Demountable Transformer so i got to scan through the booklet as John explained what was happening. Here he also showed me how a sodium lamp worked and we discussed frequency and wave lenghts which was interesting we shook a mirror to look at frequency . After fidling around with differnt wires John decided to put turns there instead of wire. I then went for lunch and arrived back a bit late. We headed to John kellys lab where he was trying to set up an experiment involving the method used by old tv's but the equipment needed was being used in the medical research lab. The second year energy students were in the lab and we went and got ice for their experiments. After we went to the medical research lab where i was introduced to some post - Grades . We then went to the Pc room and soon it was 5 o clock and time to go home .
Day 2 - wednesday the 10th of February.
Wednesday was my second day as i had to play a match with the school on Tuesday. I went to find Maria's office which i had completely forgot how to get to. After being in a few different buildings which i had thought looked familiar i headed to the main reception again and asked for directions . After getting lost a couple more times i reached it soon after 9. Maria brought me down to Eammon's lab which was a 1st year lab. It was their first lab with peter murphy and eammon had arranged a place for me to carry out the experiment also which dealt with Refractive indexes. With the help of eammon i carried out the experiment and drafted my results. After the lab was finished i headed up to John Kellysd lab where there was a laptop set up for me to type up my resluts on Excel. After fidling around with it for a while i got my results up.


Thursday 11th of February
On Thursday we went to the PC room where John told me all about Ip adresses on computers and how you can identify different computers with it.We hepled one of the students to set up a scanner so he could scan items into word. After tea we went to the library where John showed me how to locate books. We also went down to the archives which had huge amounts of books , newspapers, magazines , etc . I hadn't realized how big the library actually was. Later on we hepled a postgrade move a tank of nitrogen from the medical research labs to the MSSI. Here John showed me the Electro Magnet and some other interesting equipment. We then went to John Kellys Lab where we looked at the penny/ feather experiment which involved suckin the air out of the cylinder to create a vacumn . When we did this the feather was no longer slower to fall than the penny. After lunch i went with the Post Grads to see all their projects. First Nathan and Joe showed me the electron microscope.I thought it was really cool.They put in a tiny object to view but it came up in huge magnification. We could pefectly see the different parts which were really only about 34 nanometres .The projects were really interesting but also looked difficult and the post Grads put huge amounts of time trying to get it to work better and improve the project. Immanuel then showed me his project about off shore wind turbines which was also another impressive project.
Day 5 - the 12th of February .
My last day on work experience ! Friday began with John showing me how to download skype. I didn't realize before how convinient and useful skype was. He also showed me how it worked.We then went to the workshop and john showed me how all the equipment woked. I hepled him make a piece of equipment a post grad needed for their project .Later on i went to see two more projects which were being carried out by Susan and Paul . Both of their projects were on opitical coherence tomography. They both looked at different ways to design the otc . It involved sending beams of light into a beam splitter . They told me about how Otc has advantages over other medical equipment and how it worked. Their projects were really impressive. After this Deirdre brought me into the lab and we discussed all about lab safety and the safety thats required from the lab. We looked at different chemicals and sheets had been printed out with all the properties and dangers of the chemicals. Deidre told me about how each time a person was using a chemical they would have to print out the sheet and put it in the file. We also talked about general lab safety rules and looked at them in the lab. John was in charge of designing the physics website for Ul . After lunch he showed me things about web designing and he showed me how he was going to change the website. It was really cool . After this we went to the Optics lab where John showed be the spectrometer. He put a mercury slide into it and when we looked into the spectrometer this time we got to see all the differnt colours the original bluey colour had split up to. There was a range of different colours. We also looked at sodium through the spectrometer. It was then time to go home :( . I really enjoyed my work experience in the physics department. All the people who i met through out my time there made it extremely interesting and enjoyable for me. I learned so much and was sad to be going back to school .I definitly would recommend work experience here and would like to thank everyone who helped me and showed me around throughout the week!

Work Experience

Day 1:
Started my work experience at 9:30 on Monday morning. Great! An extra half-hour's sleep! I met up with Maria at reception, and she brought me for a quick tour around the Physics department. She introduced me to Senior Technical Officer John Sweeney, who showed me around for most of the rest of the week. John and I looked around the Physics department some more. He showed me a laser inferometer in the optics lab and the signal generators and oscilloscopes in the instrumentation lab. Before we know it it's half ten. Time for a tea break!
At 11, we headed to another lab to help John Kelly set up for a first year lab. John and John (yeah, it was pretty confusing) look for the equipment they need, and discover they don't have enough cables. I'm given some wire and some small plugs to wire up. When I got that done, I sorted some resistors. At 1, I went off for lunch.
At 2:15, I headed back but get a bit lost. I find my way back to John's office by 2:30. I helped him to repair some equipment. Once we've that done, I built some simple circuits using Snap Circuits, and at half four I went home.

Day 2
When I arrived in the morning John was a bit busy, so I made some more circuits with snap circuits for a while. After that I helped him to set up for a lab he had later on. We took a break, and on our way down to The Paddock for tea, we had a look at some more of the equipment in the optics lab. Really interesting stuff.
At 11, I sat in on a first year lab. I talked to some of the students and looked at what they were doing. They seem to enjoy the courses they were studying. After the lab I meet up with my friends for lunch. In the afternoon, I had another look at the snap circuits before going home.

Day 3
On Wednesday I went to the Materials Surface Science Institute. I met up with Dr Vadood Mousavi. We talked about magnets and he told me about his work on nanowires, very small wires used in computer chips. We then went into the lab and he showed me the equipment and chemicals used to make and study these nanowires. At about 11 o'clock we went for tea.
When we came back we had a look at the microscopes used to study the very small objects studied in the MSSI. We looked at the amazing images produced by these microscopes and talked to the postgrad students who were using them. After that, we met up with Dr Abbasi Gandhi, who had done his PhD on nanowires, and he talked about the work he had done on nanowires. I then went for lunch.
After lunch we looked at some more equipment and Vadood explained more about the way nanowires are made and their uses, and then we went up to look at the computer modelling that is used to predict the results of experiments.

Day 4
I was back in the physics department on Thursday. I went to talk to the PhD students about their projects. These were really interesting, and included a medical scanner that could see through skin, a wind turbine with no gear box, and tests for determining the strengths of materials used in silicon chips. I then went to a lab with Eamonn to do some Leaving Cert Physics experiments.
After lunch, I went to the Chemistry department for a talk on chemical engineering.

The graph of the pendulum experiment I did on Thursday. I nearly got it right!


Day 5
In the morning I did another few Leaving Cert physics experiments. I measured the wavelength of a laser and of the lines on a mercury emission spectrum. After tea, I started this blog and then went for lunch.
After lunch, I helped fix some computers and graphed the results of some of the experiments I did in excel, before finishing this blog.

All in all, I had a great week. I learned a lot and met interesting people. I'd like to thank John, Eamonn, Maria, Zakhia Rahman and Vavood, and all of the other people who I met over this week.

Work Experience in UL.

Day 1 Yesterday, Monday the 1st of Febuary was my first day on work experience here in UL. I arrived at the main office at 9.30 to meet Maria who introduced herself and brought me for a brief tour of the physics department. In our travels around the department she introduced me to John and Eamon but most inportantly John Sweeney whom i would be spending the week with. After myself and John had been introduced Maria left me under his supervision.

Our day began when John brought me to the optics lab where he showed me some experiments that had been set up for some students. They were all very interesting to learn about. After a short tea break I was brought to the postgraduate laboratory where i was given a tour of all the different projects that the postgraduates were currently working on. I also got to see some very interesting pieces of equipment being used by the post grads in their research.

At 1 I went for lunch and on returning at 2 John and I went to see a demo on heat detecting cameras which i thought was very interesting. Afterwards Eamon brought me to his lab where we both conducted an experiment. I thouroughly enjoyed this. In total I had a very good first day. I went home looking forward to the upcoming week!

Day 2
Today i began in the Life science department where i was atending a Food Science lab. I got kitted out with my white coat and glasses and joined a group of students whom i would be working with for the duration of the class. Our first experiment was the saponification of food lipids and then did the determiation of iodine number in food lipids. I really enjoyed working with the other students. After lunch i went to the physics students computer lab where john explained blogging and introduced me to this!! Later ill be attending a lecture about light dispersion and refraction.

Day 3
My third day here in UL began with Leo in the Chemistry department. He showed me all of the fancy equipment in the chemistry laboratorys and i got to test some of them out with a couple of experiments. After lucnh John brought me to spend time with the postgraduates. I firstly went with Mike who showed me his work and the very interesting equipment he uses. Afterward Joey showed me all about his fascinating work with optics and lasers which could be used to tell if a person had skin cancer which i really enjoyed and found facinating. I then spent a short while with Andrea who explained all about her project to me.

Day 4
Thismorning i went with Immanuel, who is a physics postgraduate, to see his work on offshore wind turbines. I found his project extremely interesting and topical. After a short tea break John and I went to the college library where John showed me around and explained how it works. After lunch i went with Eamon to his lab where we conducted the freefall experiment and recorded the results. John then showed me all of the internal parts of a computer and then, after many attempts we managed to install windows xp onto the computer from scratch! Another very enjoyable and interesting day in UL had come to an end!

Day 5
How the week flew, here i am writing about my final day in UL. Today began over in the life science department where i attended a plant physiology lab. I was put in a group with three others and we all conducted a practical experiment which was the culture of nutrient deficient plants. I then graphed the results of my freefall experiment using excel which ive shown above.

Its hard to belive an entire week has gone by but you know what they say; Time flies when you're having fun!! I would like to say a huge thanks to John, Maria, Eamon, Jackie, Leo, all the post graduates who kindly took time out to show me their work and anyone else who i met throughout this very interesting and more importantly enjoyable week. It has been a brilliant experience and i would recommend it to anybody interested in science.
Bye :)

Work Experience

Day 1,
I went to a science demonstration as part of science week which included exploding custard, rocket balloons and the power of carbon dioxide which I found very interesting. I also went to a lecture about the universe given by a visiting professor also as part of science week this was very interesting and I found it very enjoyable. Then I went to the optics lab with my supervisor and I saw the Newton's rings experiment. I had a very good first day, I though it was very interesting and found it very enjoyable, I also found the staff very helpful.

Day 2,
I was given a tour of the physics department, I saw the optics laboratory, computer laboratory, chemical laboratory, the workshop and the postgraduate laboratory. I liked this because I got to see all the different equipment used in experiments and analysis. I also used equipment used to teach students how to create circuits. Then I went to the gas yard to make dry ice from carbon dioxide, then went to the lab and used the dry ice in an experiment. The experiment showed how alpha particles decayed from a radioactive source. I really liked doing the experiment and using the radioactive materials because I like nuclear physics.

Day 3,
Firstly we installed an operating system onto a computer. We also looked at all of the internal components of a computer. This will be very beneficial for future work with computers. Then we carried out the freefall and pendulum experiment used to find the acceleration of gravity. We were also shown an experiment to demonstrate what happens when a magnet is passed over a semi-conductor with a current flowing through it. I really liked doing the experiments today and working with computers.

Day 4,
Today we finished the freefall and pendulum experiments by putting our results into a graph in microsoft excel. Here are our results:

These are the freefall results.







These are the simple pendulum results.
Then we went to a lecture about Charles Darwin as part of science week, this was very interesting. Then we did another experiment to investigate the fundamental frequency of a stretched string with length. I really liked doing this experiment.
These are the frequency of a string results.

Day 5,
Today was our last day, in the morning we did another experiment. The experiment was to measure the wavelength of monochromatic light using a helium neon(HeNe) laser. Our result was 632nm. We really liked this experiment. Then we went to a lecture on heat and mechanics this was very good. We really enjoyed doing our work experience at U.L. and would like to thank John Sweeny and everyone in the physics department who helped us.

Work Experience, Day 5

The last day??? Today we started by working on the computer server so students could print faster. We worked on this yesterday but ran into a few problems so we finished it off this morning. After tea with Eamonn and a VERY interesting talk about photography I started to work on an fm radio for Maria's office. The more soldering the better!!! 

For lunch John showed me the new Kemny Business School and the restaurant they have. After lunch we fitted the printer server to its new home and I finished off the radio for Maria. It worked!!!

Thanks to John, Eamonn, Maria,John Bird, Eoin,postgrads and every one else who I was in contact with during the week.

It was a great experience and I would recommend it to anyone with a faint idea of doing physics in college.

Thanks again

Paudie

Bye..........................

Day 4, Work Experience

Again this morning working on the blog. The computer lab has nearly become my second home. This morning John and I worked on some computers for a new print server for the physics computer rooms. John added extra memory to the new PC as i looked on. John explained all about the inside of the computer and the importance of the different parts. We met up with Eamonn for a quick break.



We headed back to the office where we worked on the computer and a new laptop for one of the postgraduates. Maria called and gave a radio for her office which she asked me to make and assemble. I worked on the project until lunch. For lunch John took me to the sports bar by the swimming pool which was great as I had never seen that part of the Campus before.



After lunch, Maria took me across the living bridge over to the Health Science buildings to see all the "super" labs they had. It was quite interesting and they have rats there for students to work on. Maria didnt really like them so we moved on in our tour to see the other rooms that they have in the complex.



I then met with Eamonn and joined one of his 1st year labs to do some experiments. I did one of the Leaving Cert experiments which was all about light. This is an interesting experiment and one I had not done before. We took the results from the test and make a graph.



I headed home at 4.00 as i did everyday and looked forward to coming back tomorrow.....