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.
