Starting Phase 2 Commander...

And so I enter phase 2 of working, the imperious slog! More accurately, I'm now actually expected to know what I'm doing. This has issues. Most obvious being the not really knowing what I'm doing, but that doesn't seem to bother people. They have enough confidence to be getting me to write a control programme for linac4 and to trust my calculations. This worries me greatly.

To sum it up, I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to make magnetic field maps, as I've mentioned previously. A little bit tedious, but quite interesting nonetheless. After a meeting today, I've been asked to model the fields in three dimensions, and including several other magnets. I'm starting to think they want to go into computer gaming considering all this modelling stuff I'm doing. That would probably be less of a headache, Newtonian physics is simple (relatively anyway). This will be more of the same I think.

Second task. Linac4 needs something to allow the different parameters in it to be controlled. This involves making the controlling algorithms, making some sort of GUI, figuring out how to connect this to a big arse piece of equipment, and hopefully not blowing up several millions pounds and a couple of years of planning worth of work. Erm... woo?! Seriously, its a surprising amount of fun considering how difficult it should be, but luckily for me scientists are less organised than the business world, so this is fairly laid back. Huzzah for research.

Soon to come, something resembling what Switzerland is like and teh pictorz! Also, Hugo's top ten things he likes about Europe, and ten things he doesn't like (take a guess which was easier to make).


And a little leaver, and mighty fine quote by a physicist:

"Only the one who dare can win" - W. Pauli 1930. So awesome even the SAS honoured him.

We're still here, giving ground control back to Major Tom

Good day my good gentlemen and lafy folk. I return from the darkened depths of neverwhere to update once more. Hopefully twice more. We considers it sensible to have a post of science, and a post of the craziness of Geneva. Thus we start with the awesome science, obviously.

Firstly, let it be said that working on an actual physical problem as opposed to the problems you get in university courses are two rather different kettles of fish. I'v been modelling particle motion through magnetic fields in the past couple of weeks, and basic electrodynamics is what I've been using nearly exclusively. None of this quantum mechanics or high level stuff, but just classical mechanics. It probably helps that I'm only working on beam dynamics presently (think optics but with fast moving particles as opposed to light). That said, its a bit of a surprise to be relying on relatively simple things to understand the problem at hand.

Second off. Working in a lab environment is interesting, very interesting. Its possible to go a number of days without seeing anyone, and then be flooded with questions, meetings and answers in one day. Take this week for example. Everyday but Thursday was largely devoid of contact with others in my department. Come Thursday, I had to go to lectures, give a presentation, and then was introduced to the rest of the section (Accelerators and Beams, Accelerator and Beam Physics, Hadron Sources and LINACs if you're interested). All very busy.

The fruitful labours of the last couple of weeks has been the following. A couple of lines. That's it, a couple of lines. However, as I've been informed, those couple of lines tell my section whether what they're going to build is going to be irradiated in the wrong place or not, and so makes me feel all important. A little more detail:

• Spend 3 days trying to comprehend how to use PATH manager, an inhouse particle modelling package, for which the user's guide are the current maintainers of the software across the corridor. A very useful tool, but potentially flawed in its inability to model particles travelling backwards compared to the reference beam...


• Spend another 2 days making basic field maps of two sets of permenent bar magnets. This sounds surprisingly simple, but the input format was very touchy, and finding the correct dimensions from schematics written in a language you don't understand is a trifle challenging.


• Spend a day learning to use SuperFish, a magnetic field modeller based on materials and magnet input data. Again, getting used to the input format and using basic electrodynamics.


• Spend 2 days making an accurate field map (all materials and bits considered), analyse particle data, and give a presentation on this to a room of brains (my supervisor, his boss and other Postdocs. Not at all nerve racking. Was quite thrilling though).

A minor level of insight I hope, and not too confusing.