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 :)