The three ways of science - Introduction

This is a series of articles I've playing around with for a while. It strikes me that for all the publicity science might get at random times, its rare that anyone describes what doing the science is like, rather than why you do it. So why not give a little taster as to what yonder scientists do to do science? If you think about, there's three big areas that most research scientists/engineers work in to discover stuff;

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  Theoretical Models - Deriving equations from either other equations/first principles to derive a relationship between a number factors using mathematical functions. Ultimately this is the model thats being tested whenever you do computational work or experiments. Not this isn't just for fundamental discoveries, often this is necessary to derive an experimental methodology or even a way to implement computer code See Numerical Methods
  
  
  
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  Computational Simulations - The newest comer to the field. This wonderful, wonderful new tool has only been with us for 65 years (Babbage's engines never really being used for research, only gunnery tables. Boo!), but in that time has probably been the most profound step in speeding up the progress of research since the discovery of calculus. It makes it possible to solve things that can't be solved with analytical mathematics, allows us to quickly extract predictions from new theories, and is even used to design experiments to design experiments. Yes that's a double. This is crazy shit dude.
  
  
  
  
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  Experimental Measurements - The grand daddy of them all. And still, ultimately the final decider of the truth/accuracy of science. And somewhat annoyingly still the most annoying to do. Because often the universe has so many phenomena happening on top of one another, you just have to sift through that much data to get an answer beyond kinda. And, from my experiences, still the most fun.
  
  

So, ready to explore?

Media watched science...

..Now science watch media. Now the media have been reporting on scientists for... well, centuries. Even since the dawn of easy intercontinental communication we've had newspapers reporting on various parts of science, our man Einstein being a classic example (a good read just for old reporting style). We've had the early days of the nuclear age, the wonder of the Apollo missions, the swing into the 80s pop science led by Carl Sagan and the good Mr. Feynman. Even recently we've had Auntie churning out science programmes like a baby on crack. Wonders of the Solar System, The Infinite Monkey Cage and a dozen others.


But now, it appear scientists are wanting to get in on the action. Blogs are one of the front lines, the Guardian Science blogs being a prime example. Not to mention the sheer number of labs now running twitter feeds (CERN, Fermilab, ESRF, fuck dude the IoP subgroups are running individual feeds nowadays). Now we have groups of enthusiasts and scientists collaborating to make full blown documentaries. And in a somewhat strange recursive phenomenon, CERN have started showing documentaries made about CERN to the folks working at CERN.


But it gets better, because now the scientists know that they have an audience. And they might be trying to use it. Pervasive media ahoy. May it continue like continuing thing.

I'm good enough to what now?

So a couple of months ago I wrote something about how reputation is kind of the king of determining how good a scientist you are. This reputation malarky is founded on presentations, posters, conferences and that great oracle, journal articles. I'd always wondered what it's like to have your first article published. Would it be a warm and fuzzy feeling? Would one want to go and get trashed to celebrate this joyous ocassion? Would there be a great sigh of relief to know that you didn't cock up as much as you thought? Well, now I get to know. Well, waiting... waiting...

Ok the verdict was a warm fuzzy feeling initially. But now there's the other feeling. That feeling you get when you realise that someone might take what you've written and use it in another project. Now that's the scary feeling. Little Jimmy (or Big Jimmy) will look at this paper and go... "Ah hah! Exactly what I was looking for! Let's go from here." and then will start work. And then... it might go to shit. Or it might go awesomely, and then I'll get cited or some shit like that. Now there's an awesome thought, someone saying "Citation needed!" Then some dude picks up a copy of that paper and says, "Ok." Fuck yeah!

Ok, calm now. Ok, somewhat less bizarre I also find it quite comical that despite currently working in accelerator physics that my first publication is in materials science/chemistry. For work I finished over a year ago now. If nothing else it tells you that yes, you really can change your field of research if you put you noggin to the grind stone. Alternatively, kangerooes have eaten my feet. Damn hopping swine.

Round and round in circles...

We go round and round again. You know what one of the best things about being an academic is? You get to travel semi-regularly to work with others. You know what the worst bit of being an academic with a compunction to go see friends for any excuse is? You travel a metric fuckton, mostly in short bursts. So in 2.5 weeks that's been 8 countries. Nine flights. One imprompetu overnight stay in a hotel. Too many delayed flights. A little too much crappy airplane food (although their sandwichs are pretty good nowadays). Jumping from 30C in Cyprus to 17C in Geneva. And guess what, I'd do it all over again given the opportunity. Well, given 3 weeks I kind of will. Who needs a body clock anyway?

Countries by the Numbers - Denmark

This is unashamedly stolen from the good Tsuki-meister, with a healthy dose of exceptionally xenophobic humour dropped in for good measure (but don't worry, I'll spread the stereotypes to everyone equally). I wouldn't mind doing this for science labs too at some point, but I'll have to visit some more before I get around to that really.

Days spent: 10
Days overcast: 6
Days sunny: 3
Days resembling British summer: Enough
Meals that didn't contain meat: 0
Meals that contained vegetables: Half... maybe.
Highest point climbed: significantly under 9000*
Cynicism of local humour: Ten sacks of ROFLs in my waffles

Rating: Kent with a Cornish accent

*An almighty 168m high. Actually about 5m shorter than the real highest point in Denmark, but the 10m tall tower at the top kind of swings it.

What happens in Ebeltoft,

Stays in Ebeltoft (much like Cluses, but that's a different story). So here it is, the very end. The grande finale. The terminus. One week later on, I again find myself in Copenhagen airport, this time somewhat less apprehensive about the oncoming barrage of information, mostly since it will be from me rather than at me.

Approximately one hundred bright eyed and bushy tailed graduates descended upon quaint little Ebeltoft, for a gruelling one week (and it was one solid week, no weekends) intensive course during which the ideas and knowledge of some living giants (in more than one case literally) was forcefully hammered into our soft, squishy brains in the less than vain attempt to educate us on the finer points of the gruelling subject of radio frequency physics and engineering for particle accelerators. Hordes of eager learners (curiously as many old as young. I was probably the second or third youngest attendee at 23) gobbled up information, food, wine and the stunning nightlife (one billiards table and a barman with a curiously cynical sense of humour) on offer, and digested it in a somewhat suggestive manner. Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is the wonderful world of graduate summer schools (because they're always in the summer).

Picture the scene, you are taken to some semi-idyllic setting in the farthest flung reaches of Europe (Denmark), and subsequently crammed into a room along with the other students for 7 hours of lectures per day. For six whole days (the seventh being an excursion to... a science lab! And a fight involving vikings and the tallest hill in Denmark (all 162m of it!), but more on that later). That's 42 hours of lectures. In a week. I didn't have that many hours of lectures per semester for most of my courses at undergraduate! But I'll be damned if after it all I wasn't clammering for more like some time-addled crack addict. The constant battering/reinforcement of one overarching subject has this wonderful effect of making you think about it... constantly. You just want more of the little bastard, even if its 3am and you're taking the scenic route home and suddenly the masts of the ships in the harbour are reminding you of coaxial power couplers (it was quite a lot of beer ok?).

For a bit of the scale I figure I'll list the erm... exciting selection here:

• Revision of Electromagnetism (3hrs)


• S-Parameters (1hr)


• Smith Charts (1hr)


• RF Power Transportation (2hrs)


• Power Coupling (1hr)


• Beam-Cavity Interactions (2hrs)


• RF Power Generation (2hrs)


• Design and Technology of High Power Couplers (1hr)


• Basics of RF Electronics (2hrs)


• Cavity Basics (1hr)


• Cavity Types (1hr)


• Ferrite Cavities (1hr)


• Low-Beta Cavities (1hr)


• Low Level RF (3hrs)

Note: Up to here is considered the basics...

• Superconducting Cavities (2hrs)


• Numerical Methods (2hrs)
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• Transverse Deflecting Cavities (Crab Cavities) (2hrs)


• RF Beam Diagnostics (2hrs)


• RF Measurements (2hrs)


• Higher Order Mode Mitigation (2hrs)


• RF Gymnastics (2hrs)


• Cavity Manufacturing Techniques (2hrs)


• Exercises (Everything about Smith Charts, S-parameters and designing a pi-mode cavity) (8hrs)


• Seminars (On the European Spallation Source and MAX-IV) (2hrs)

Now you see, that's how to fill your brains with one subject really fast. Not just fill, cram full of. Epic brainess this most certainly was.

But of course, this being a graduate school there are more than just lectures here. There are people. Many people. One hundred and one people to be precise. And all of them are going to be doing different things. Most of them exceptionally interesting things. Like Nirav, friendly fellow from India currently working at Royal Holloway on Beam Position Monitors for CLIC. Very interesting discussions on low level RF. He's also previously worked in nuclear fusion. Or Shubab, from GSI in Germany. This friendly fellow works on using higher order modes (HOMs) in cavities to track ions in an ion accelerator planned at the FAIR complex. Not just that, they can apparently pick out what the charge of the ion is, how many there are, and the species of isotope. Pretty bad arse no? Or we have Julian (or Jules) of Rutherford Appleton Labs in the UK who is a recent comer to our field. He is currently working on RF power distribution systems after quite a extensive career in radio broadcasting, mostly the construction of antennas in many parts of the world.

This leads to many long discussions on random and sometimes quite hilarious topics, but is also a great way to be forcefully extracted from your own little corner of the research world to see what others are doing, and how you can learn more from others. Life is always easier when you know someone who once built a BPM so you know why replacing its pick up with plastic just won't cut it.

So ladies and gentlemen, there is your rough and ready guide to graduate schools. If you get the chance to attend one, I whole heartedly recommend it. Just be enthusiastic otherwise its going to flatten you like a steam train. But if you weren't enthusiastic, you wouldn't be in this business to begin with.

When you stay or when you go...

...Father Christmas will still find you to say ho-ho-ho. Given my current situation, I thought it the ideal time to speak about transcience again. So as I sit in Copenhagen airport, waiting 3 hours for my connecting flight to Aarhus to take me onto Ebeltoft, I can't help but wonder how does one get into and cope with random situations such as these. One of the constant things that seems to come up as a scientist as just how much you have to travel. Two postdocs in my department at Manchester are foreign nationals. Not nearby mind you, one is Romanian and the other a Kiwi. Three of the other postgrads are from Southern Asia (India and Thailand to be precise). This isn't just moving country however. Conferences, those dreaded, delicious hellbeasts of information that crop up once or twice a year, are frequently held in beautiful locales. In the arse end of nowhere. Which is great unless you're actually trying to get there. And given few attendees outside of the students care about the surroundings its largely irrelevant.

By way of example, I'm currently on my way to a graduate school in Ebeltoft, Denamrk. On RF for Accelerators. Otherwise known as "The Source of a Thousand PAINS!" As google maps so helpfully tells me its also located in the arse end of nowhere. With a car, not a problem with Europe's sickeningly efficient road system. As a lowly grad student that hasn't gotten around the getting one yet... not so much. Throw in a need to actually socialise with old friends and you end up vaguely with this.

In this past week I've travelled from the booney wilds of Saint Genis, France, to Geneva Airport, Switzerland. So far so good, only about 5 miles. Now fly to Manchester. Ok, about an extra 800miles. Not so bad. Now drive to Bournemouth with van to move out of flat. Ok, an extra 250 miles, still not too excessive. Now train to London, followed by a flight to Copenhagen, then to Aarhus, followed by a bus ride to Ebeltoft. Not bad for 5 days. I'd mention the following flight to Cyprus and back to Geneva but that might just be taking the piss. But I hope gets across the general mayhem of travelling in science. And it seems to get worse as you progress through your career.

My supervisor, crazy bastard he is has so far been to CERN, Kyoto and I think DESY already this year. He'll be doing something at Ebeltoft too for a couple of days and will be going to SLAC in California in September too. I think technically that qualifies him for some kind of Kyoto protocol all by himself but I digress.

It raises a couple of weird phenomena amongst particle physicists which are quite funny when you think about it. For instance, people from the US visiting CERN to do shift work/local work. I know a number that just stick to American time, and work 7pm-3am to save themselves jet lag and breaking family contact for too long. It wouldn't work for a long placement, but for a two week visit it can be surprisingly effective. Or organising to go abroad at 2 days notice. Admittedly this tends to be more students than academics, mostly because the academics organise it and subsequently forget to tell the students. But this being science we do it anyway because its fucking hilarious. The problem being that when you land you sometimes find yourself in the correct time-zone to start work straight away! Not so fun after a 3 hour flight however. But luckily everyone's in the same boat so you can get a lot of slack cut for you. But even then the constant movement can quite effectively fuck up your body clock for a couple of days. Of course this not just being physical, but mentally you can get a bit screwed up. After being in Southampton for 3 days I've only just properly gotten it into my head that yes, I am in Southampton, not Geneva. And subsequently I'll probably have the same happen when I go to Denmark and then onto Cyprus. Sometimes it just comes one big blur of events which you just attach to auto-pilot and mull through with all the grace and glory of a elephant through an ants nest. Fortunately I have an awesomely understanding and similarly insane group of friends so imprompetu jokes about incest and stealing noses are generally taken well.

On a slightly more peculiar topic, one of the more curious topics that comes up amongst my fellows is what kind of effect our work has on the world around us. Not the outcome of our work (that would be an encyclopedia by itself), but rather the things we have cause as a by product. Look at all those flights I'm taking. That's probably my entire years allotment of greenhouse gas emissions in one week. I can eat as little meat and local produce as I want (by the way, I recommend the concept of weekday vegetarianism, its surprisingly easy and beans are awesome), but those planes will shit all over the global warming side of it (but hell, I'm helping to prevent soil and ground water wastage as well so I'm still in the net benefits I think). But on the other hand I also do a hell of a lot to spread humanities knowledge (in a roundabout way). Of course this would all by a hell of lot easier if Europe put together an expansive high speed rail network, but that's a work in progress in all likelihood.

So, as I jump on the plane to Aarhus, here's hoping I get to spend a bit longer somewhere soon. It'd be nice to feel a bit at home somewhere again. But maybe I've got decades to do that. Here's to living out of a backpack me hearties! For the long or short of it.