Diamond Light

I started planning my personal statement (when I say 'plan' I basically mean a scruffy spider diagram!) and I remembered going to the Diamond Light Accelerator in Oxford on a school trip earlier this year. I suddenly realised I had never blogged about it because it was before all of this started so here is the post about 9 months too late but at least I got it done before my 100th post (which I am super excited about by the way! So excited I have no idea what to say in it to make it absolutely brilliant... SUCH a lot of pressure!!)

Anyway so this was another one of those trips that I loved so much that I was grinning from ear to ear which by now my parents are totally used to but at the time it was quite out of the ordinary. It was really interesting but the only downside was that the accelerator was absolutely massive and we did so much walking I was completely exhausted by the end! The storage ring is 561m in circumference, of course not as big as the CERN accelerator but they have different uses so this doesn't affect the work here.

I learnt quite a lot - for example a switch might look like an ordinary light switch but sometimes it is in fact a switch that could turn off the entire accelerator. The accelerator had an incredibly number of safety features! Another is that to be working in such an amazing place you have to give a lot. That includes extra shifts every time the accelerator shuts down, work very hard at solving problems, working late into the night and making colleagues your new family.

It is my understanding that the accelerator basically shoot electrons so fast they give off a light. This light is used for looking at things better than we normally can. The research facility is non-profit and it is very competitive for researcher to get time with the beams.

I had a look at the kind of Physics that the facility has helped develop but I have to admit I struggled to understand any of it and got a little scared so I can't explain but they do a lot of things which have a lot of practical uses for many industries, here's the link if you want to know more!

Even though this was quite a while ago, the trip has stayed with me! There were a few embarrassing memories form the trip but I wouldn't change anything - it was great! Except I would take pictures, if only I knew I would need them for a post in the future!!