Blog posts

JET is cool

Ksenia profile

MSci Physics with a year in Europe

PhysSoc is a free society, which you automatically become a member of by studying physics. It organises many a thing, such tours for students. Many of them are proper trips, which cost the moneys, but a free one came up and I wanted to look at a TOKOMAK.

JET is the Joint European Torus and the largest plasma confinement experiment in the world. It is the predecessor of ITER and DEMO, which should be efficient enough to not only break even, but keep up a self-sustaining fusion reaction (as long as you keep feeding the plasma.)

The idea of creating fusion in our humble non-sun environment has been around for a long time and many of us probably learned about the poor unfortunate who was certain he had achieved cold fusion, although he was measuring background radiation.

Challenge of the Week: Being a patient

MBBS Medicine

This week the biggest challenge was being a patient myself. Don’t worry readers (aka mum and dad) I was not injured, but found myself needing to visit the dentist for some work, and visiting occupational health for some blood tests and vaccinations for my elective.

It’s probably well agreed that the worst possible patient is one who thinks they know lots (courtesy of a search engine), but in fact don’t know much at all. Well, this was me. First, at the dentist I was looking at the x-rays and standing up whilst the dentist was talking, until I was sharply asked to sit down by the dental nurse!

The Battle of the Fake Twitter Followers

Silvia

MSc Strategic Marketing

We’ve learned a lot about online tools. One tool that I found quite interesting is Twitter Audit, which allows you to see how many real or fake followers a Twitter account has. The results are quite interesting, some people may not be as popular as they seem.

10) Cristiano Ronaldo (36%)

9) Barack Obama (37%)

8) Rihanna (38%)

7) Katy Perry (39%)

6) Justin Bieber (42%)

5) Kim Kardashian (48%)

4) Oprah Winfrey (53%)

3) Donald J. Trump (64%)

2) Ellen DeGeneres (74%)

1) Kanye West (92%)

How many of your followers are real?

I <3 muffins

Dora profile

MEng Chemical Engineering

I’ve already mentioned that I’m terrible at cooking… (A piece of advice: try to “cover the basics” before coming to uni. Your life will be so much easier if you don’t have to google how to make pasta…). On the other hand, I love baking! (Not so useful at uni, but anyway…) So I brought a muffin tray and my favourite bowl from home, bought a dry measuring cup so now I can bake muffins any time I like! 🙂

The first Woodward Muffin Time was just before Valentine’s Day. We have this nice project called Woodward Newsletter (I am the article editor, because I don’t do enough things already… 😀 ) and I have a personal column in it, called “Cooking made easy by Dora”.

10 ‘must-try’ Eateries in South Ken

MBBS Medicine

1. Oddonos ice cream shop An authentic Italian gelaterie making its own ice cream on site! A range of delicious flavours of ice cream and sorbet are available, with tables to sit and enjoy inside and out. Do visit if, like me, you get stuck choosing a flavour as you are usually able to try a few samples to help you decide. They also do ice cream birthday cakes (hint hint!).

As they say: “Life is too short to eat bad ice-cream”

2. Franco Manca A small but growing London chain of sourdough pizza restaurants. Great pizzas- variety of toppings, freshly made, taste amazing, and affordable on a student budget!

Valentine’s Day Weekend

Amanda Koh profile

BEng Computing

The Valentine’s Day weekend was one of the most memorable ones I’ve had in a while, albeit getting absolutely no work done and consequently drowning in coursework the following week. On the 13th, I had tickets to see Hurts at the O2 Academy Brixton. This was my second gig in London, the first of which was Panic at the Disco which was at the same venue.

I’ve discussed this before, but going to concerts alone requires a whole new level of shamlessness + you really really really have to like the band. But when you do it right, lose your yourself properly and rave like the shameless loner you are, its AWESOME.

Stress & the sea

MSCi Physics

For my last research interfaces task (yes it is finally over now) I had to write a short ‘article’ style thing on my Masters project. I thought I’d share it with you here and then tell you about some of the realities of it that I didn’t write about…

Listening to the sea  

It’s not often you find a whole new scientific discipline in the rubbish. That’s what W. Steven Holbrook effectively did back in 2003 when he noticed that there was meaning in the noise people searching for oil were throwing away.

For decades people had been taking ships out into the centre of the ocean and firing high pressure bubbles of air into the water to create sound waves searching for oil beneath the ocean floor.

Behind the safety googles

Dora profile

MEng Chemical Engineering

“CE1-03-2 Foundation Laboratory (2015-2016)”

This is the fancy name of the lab sessions, something which we only started in the spring term, but I can understand now why… Even though we only have 2 sessions in approx. every two weeks, it requires a lot of preparation and work afterwards. In short, it is extremely time-consuming.

In my high school we didn’t have lab sessions, because my school didn’t have a lab. I did only a few experiments before uni (usually in summer camps or in other schools) but I think we can easily say I had no experience in labs.

Surgeons are amazing.

MBBS Medicine

So this term I have been extremely lucky to have been doing Surgery at Ealing. It really is a fantastic hospital to work at. Thankfully even though it is quite far away, it is a straight bus from my house in Brook Green to Ealing Hospital- I LOVE the 607.

I was working on colorectal surgery at Ealing for 5 weeks- it was so gross but so interesting. I saw some surgeries during my attachment that honestly my stomach was not prepared to see, and I can normally cope! For example, the first surgery when my scrubs got tarnished with faecal material I really did reconsider my career path.

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