How to… Cope with Starting University

Another “How to” post for you all! My first year of university was now three years ago (which is quite scary really!), however I’m lucky enough to have at least two more years to go. I really have loved my time at university, but I know that leaving home to go to uni is terrifying as well as exciting! Hopefully I’ll help settle a few nerves, and maybe you’ll gain a few helpful tips!

Don’t be worried about being nervous

Some people might not show it, but everyone will be a little bit nervous and it’s not a bad thing. For most people it will be their first experience of living away from home on a particularly long term basis, and for some it will be the first experience of having to “fend for themselves”. You may also be panicking about making friends and whether or not you’ll actually enjoy the course. I certainly did. I was terrified that I’d made the wrong decision; that I was actually going to find out I was terrible at Physics and that everyone would hate me. It wasn’t true, but these feelings are natural. Just don’t let them consume you and spoil the (hopefully) excited feelings too – university is a brilliant experience for the vast majority of people and to enjoy it fully you can’t let yourself worry too much.

Take as many of the opportunities available to you as you can

University will present many opportunities to you that you’ve never had before. This will range from all sorts of societies to other events hosted by your university. Going to lectures for other subjects, attending talks on topics that interest you, checking out some local or student talent at gig nights or giving something completely new to you a try will not only be fun, it really gets you involved. Your first year at university will be challenging (and most likely tiring) but you want to be able to look back on a fantastic year, so if that means stepping out of your comfort zone and saying yes to trying things you wouldn’t have before – why not give it a go? However don’t overwhelm yourself – you have got a degree to do as well!

Enjoy meeting new people

You will meet so many people during your first week at university – some of whom you will never speak to again! I was so shy before I went to university but realised quickly that talking to people and pushing myself to introduce myself and to be friendly to everyone was the best way forwards. Trying to meet as many people as you can means you find the people who you want to be friends with sooner. Don’t limit yourself to your corridor or flat, try and meet people at other social events. A good tip is to find yourself another person to go around with, approaching people as a pair is less daunting, and being able to make an introduction is a good conversation starter! Remembering names can be a challenge too but don’t be afraid to ask people for their name again (well unless you’ve asked loads of times before!) – I used to go back to my room and jot down names and a fact about them just to try and remember them in the future (it worked too!) You will also meet so many different types of people, so don’t expect everyone to be like people you already know. University brings together people from all over the world, with vastly different life experiences. This makes it really interesting to get to know people, but can also be challenging as you may be forced to a) meet people who you never want to speak to again or b) force you to reconsider assumptions you may have made about people before. However treat every new introduction as an opportunity to make a friend and you should have a great time! Meeting new people can also be a great way to challenge yourself to try new things – why not go along with your new friend and try that martial arts class they were talking about? It could be fun!

Top tip: Common conversation starters are “What are you studying?”, “Which halls/ college are you in?” and “Whereabouts in the country are you from?”. These questions get pretty tiring pretty quickly so try and get to know people by asking other questions too and starting a conversation from there. Ask them about their hobbies, whether they plan to try anything new whilst at university, what have they enjoyed at uni so far etc.

Be yourself

University is a great time to try new things, but this doesn’t mean you have to change who you are completely! I got to university and was able to feel more confident in myself as I was surrounded by people who were like me – I was no longer immediately stereotyped as the awkward nerdy “good girl” and so could really be me! So I changed, but it was more about becoming the person I’d tried to hide away which was lovely. But as a warning – don’t turn yourself into someone else. You have to be honest with yourself about who you are and who you want to be. If you don’t want to go out drinking every night – that’s fine! If you don’t know whether you are in with a crowd of people you don’t want to be – be brave and find someone new! You’ll have a much better time in the long run if you’re not keeping up a pretense, and you’ll find your closest friends too by showing the world who you really are and what you are really interested in.

Stay safe and healthy

Make sure you take care of yourself. University does present challenges, some as trivial as surviving your first bout of Fresher’s Flu (as you mingle with everyone elses germs – yuck!) to others that are much more important like getting home safely in a new city after your first night out. Find out who you can go to or call for help, make sure you follow and guidance given to you and stay safe! Take advantage of anything that makes you feel safer too, be it paying a bit extra for a taxi to make sure you don’t have to walk home by yourself or seeing if you can get a free personal alarm from your university welfare service. Most people are fine, but you don’t want to risk it! Also your first few weeks will be hectic, but make sure you take some time for yourself and make sure you don’t completely run yourself down otherwise you’ll probably not make the best start to your actual degree course. Another good tip is to make your room your own when you get there, and don't leave your unpacking too late. It will save you time in the long run and gives you a nice space to retreat to when you need your own space!

Overall though, have an amazing time. I’ve loved my time at university and I wish any Freshers the best of luck! 

Reflections on being an Ogden Blogger

NB. Apologies, this was meant to be published a little while back! However due to lack of internet whilst on holiday, followed by a mad rush to move back up to Durham and into my new house and the setting up of internet there I've only just had the opportunity to post! 

It was only when I’d got back from being on holiday that I realised that the Blogden year was over! If you’ve been following this blog, you may know that it was started as part of the Blogden, a blogging scheme run by the Ogden Trust. The Ogden Trust is an organisation that promotes Physics education through a variety of schemes. I first became involved through a teaching internship in 2013, and then went on to win the competition to become an Ogden Blogger!

So how has it gone? Well, this year has been fairly tough for me. I suffered from quite a lot of ill health, which made completing blogs a lot more difficult as I couldn’t look at computer screens without feeling sick and getting headaches. As such, my blog posts at the start of the year were posted at more random time intervals. I also had a pause during the exam period, as I really needed to concentrate on studying. However, overall I did manage to get an average of one post every fortnight, even if they were occasionally posted in quick succession when I’d had to catch up a bit!

Despite all that, I think it has gone pretty well! I don’t know how many regular readers I have had (if you are a regular reader say hello below in the comments section – it would be nice to hear from you!), but pretty much every post I’ve done has gathered some interest from many different places across the world (which I think is very cool!) A few statistics for you:

As of 20^th September 2014 (when I collected all the stats together!)

Total Page Views: 1565

Month with the most page views: March - my post about being a female in a STEM subject"I'm not an anomaly - I'm just me!" gained quite a lot of attention!

Post with the most page views: According to the "clicks" on individual posts "How to... Cope with Physics exams" gained the most views! Hopefully it helped some people out whilst they were studying!

Post that generated the most comments/ reaction:This depends on which platform! "How to... Cope with Physics exams" (above) generated the most interest on blogger itself, however "Best bits of being a Physics student" got the most reaction on twitter!
Reader statistics: Most people were from the UK (1200 ish) but I also had readers from USA, Canada, France, Russia and many others (Just over 20 different countries in total)! Sometimes it looked like my blog was being linked to from sites across the world which was quite exciting even if I couldn't track what they were saying about it!

What would I do differently if I could do it again? I think that posting more regularly would be a good idea, as it means that people would know when a post was going to arrive rather than it just appearing randomly! That was all part of the original plan, (unfortunately life got in the way) but it’s definitely something I’ll work harder on in the future. I also need to get more to grips with Twitter – I just never remember to post anything interesting I think of, so whilst it has been a good way to help publicise my blog most of my tweets are just shameless self promotion! However, in mildly exciting news, I did get featured in a collection of science Haikus submitted by twitter users to Popular Science which was quite exciting!

I’ve really enjoyed the experience overall and am definitely going to keep blogging. It’s a good space for me to collect my thoughts, and hopefully interest a few people along the way! If there’s anything you’d like to hear about let me know. I plan to carry on blogging about general life at university and any tips I have along the way, as well as blogging about Physics. The next year at university promises to be a lot more interesting for me, with bigger projects to complete and new things to learn about. I also plan to blog more about my life outside of Physics as apparently some of you find that interesting!

Thank you all for reading, it’s been lovely having you!

My next blog post will be on starting university - a daunting prospect for many! Whilst I know lots of people have already started on Freshers week I also know plenty more haven't, and I plan to cover time beyond freshers week too! If anyone who reads this has any questions please do let me know!

Best Bits of Being a Physics Student so far!

Well it’s my last day of work tomorrow. It has been a VERY long summer – being a cleaner is a really tough job. It’s also a horrible job – I think people would be amazed at the disgusting state hotel rooms are left in and there’s only one person who’s going to clean it up – the poor old cleaner! However, it has given me enough money to go on a nice holiday next week (I’m off to Sardinia!) and has given me some more motivation to get back to my degree! It’s a tough truth, but working in a job like this does make me want to work harder just so I hopefully wont have to do anything similar again! It also makes you think about what you like most about your degree as you look forward to not having to clean up other people’s bodily fluids, and so I thought this would be a perfect time to let you know what have been my favourite bits of my degree so far.

Good old first year textbook!
If you're heading off to study
Physics you may well find
yourself with a copy!

Every UK physics degree has to fulfill criteria set out by the Institute of Physics, so every degree at every university will cover some common topics. These include advanced mathematics, mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, quantum physics, condensed matter physics, waves and optics and relativity. This sounds like a lot, but having looked through the list I’ve covered all of these in my first two years (I’ve got another two years to go which will be more specialised). While different universities cover material at different speeds, and some go into more detail than others it guarantees that every physics graduate will have a certain level of knowledge about a wide range of core physics topics. But which bits of these have I enjoyed the most?

Quantum Physics

This has definitely been one of my favourite parts of the course. Not only is it mind bending and really exciting, with each new year it becomes cooler. At school I would always say “Oh yes, I’m really interested in quantum”. Little did I know. Literally. At school, you basically learn about some funny particles with weird names and some concepts that sound pretty cool. It’s when you get to university and get to see WHY it works that it becomes much more amazing. The maths is really pretty, the fact it all works when you apply it both to the micro and macro scales and because it is just so often so impossible to understand (well in a sense that you can’t really imagine it) but you can see that it does work makes it a really FANTASTIC topic to study!

How cool does this look! It's such a
lovely equation! :D

Mechanics

This was the very first topic I studied at university, and what a wake up it was for me. As a result of not having studied Further Maths at school, I’d never done any of the mechanics maths modules. I’d only studied topics like vectors and calculus as fairly abstract topics in maths, so discovering they were so important in physics was actually quite a big jump for me. I’m not ashamed to say that I found this topic really challenging either. Most other people had more experience than me so I had to work really hard. But it paid off and actually was really rewarding for me as I felt like I was getting somewhere straight away. My tutor was also fantastic, and I’ll always be grateful to her for convincing me that I wasn’t completely stupid or out of my depth!

The random, generic 'bodies' that
you use in mechanics quickly became
known as potatoes...

Labs

I really love practical work – I always have. I love actually doing stuff myself and over the years I’ve had the opportunity to do some pretty cool stuff. First year labs weren’t always the most interesting tasks, however as we gained the skills required to become more independent the tasks we were given became much better. At the end of my first year I got to do a week long project using X rays to determine the composition of British Coins – we even got to use super strong acids to remove the outer coatings to determine the compositions of the cores (1p,2p and 5p all have steel cores now as otherwise the metal they are made of would be worth more than the coin. As such, not all coins are magnetic) and got to prove which pound coin out of a selection was fake. It's also meant I am full of a wealth of fairly dull information about British coins! My second year long project was also really good – over 6 weeks we got to write programmes in python and use telescopes with digital cameras attached to determine the temperature of sunspots. Next year I’ve got another long project to come, I don’t know the exact topic yet but it will probably fall within the Nuclear Physics category. Exciting times!  

Believe it or not this is the sun! (And
I took the photo!)

I think these three topics have been the most notable parts for me so far, but I am very excited to continue with my degree and find out more stuff. The great thing about a physics degree though is that it is usually pretty interesting, and there are some real WOW moments. When we managed to find the speed of light using Maxwell’s equations (which link electricity and magnetism), when we first learnt about relativity, when we saw how cool maths could really be, when we spent some amazing hours watching beautiful ‘fly throughs’ of galaxies… they’re moments that make the degree really worth it. And well it’s much better than cleaning!

First year coin project - I spent rather
a long time cleaning coins for this
project!

Summertime means summer reading!

Hello everyone! Sorry for another post so soon, the other was meant to be posted a few days earlier but I ended up with no laptop over the weekend (although I did have a great weekend in Southampton, including my first ever trip to an IKEA! :P) Today I’m continuing the theme of things I enjoy outside of Physics, and I thought I’d give you a little look into one of my favourite activities – reading. I love reading and have read lots of books from a huge range of genres (aided in part by studying A level English Literature which encouraged me to read books that I wouldn’t have done otherwise). As a student I have far less time to read for pleasure than I would like, but this means that the summer holidays are a great time to catch up! This is a list of a few books I’ve been reading recently, some from new authors, some from authors I’ve been reading for years.

 

The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson

An amazing book, which follows the adventurers of an old man fed up of life in the care home he has ended up in. Whilst following the adventure he finds himself in having climbed out of his bedroom window (in his slippers), the book also narrates his life story, where it turns out he has met some of the most incredible people and been part of some of the most remarkable events of the 20^th century. Sort of Forrest Gump-ish in it’s approach, very funny, highly original and well worth a read!

Join Me – Danny Wallace

Really really funny. The true story of a man who was bored, so accidentally started his own ‘cult’. What do you do when you realise you’ve ended up with followers? How far do you go to achieve an aim which you sort of accidentally set out to fulfill? From the same author as Yes Man (another great book and much better than the film) this is highly recommended. I actually laughed out loud, which I rarely do.

And the Mountains Echoed – Khaled Hosseini

I’ve been a massive fan of Khaled Hosseini since reading “The Kite Runner” a number of years ago, but I enjoyed his second novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” even more. I didn’t realise he had a new book out until recently but it was well worth the wait. If you haven’t read any of his books, do. They are really fascinating insights into the lives of people living in Afghanistan, and do an amazing job of portraying how conflict has shaped the country of Afghanistan. Whilst “The Kite Runner” is predominantly a father-son story, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” a mother-daughter story, “And the Mountains Echoed” has multiple different stories woven into one book, each connected in some way. Whilst it is not my favourite of his books, it was still incredibly powerful and well written. Everyone should read at least one of these books!

Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

One of the Sci fi classics. It was given to me to read by my boyfriend who loves Sci fi, and whilst I usually prefer fantasy or realistic fiction this really impressed me. A classic tale of child soldiers used in an intergalactic war. I’ve also seen the fairly recent film – definitely not as good as the book. Even if you don’t like Sci fi give this a go! On that note I’d also recommend “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman, another novel about interstellar warfare. This looks at the idea of how relativity could effect an interstellar war – will the enemy be ‘ahead’ of you in time when you next face them in battle and thus have more advanced weaponry? I enjoyed it and I think other people who are interested in Physics (well especially relativity) would as well!

An Abundance of Katherines – John Green

John Green is an excellent author and not just for the swathes of teenage girls who make up a large number of his fans! The first book of his I read was “The Fault in Our Stars” which even despite all of the hype is an incredibly well written book, and the recent film is also very good. He has a way of creating characters that are complex but very relatable and the stories definitely get you to think about life. “An Abundance of Katherines” was the last of his I had left to read and I wasn’t disappointed. Following the story of a child prodigy who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend, it covers issues such as the difficulties involved in growing up as a gifted child and the process of becoming an individual as you go through your teenage years and become an adult. Not my favourite, but still very good.  

In a Sunburned Country – Bill Bryson
Again, I’ve read a lot of Bill Bryson in the past. I’m still currently reading this one, and am enjoying following his travels through Australia. I’ve always been interested in Australia and would love to go one day (good job I’m not afraid of spiders or snakes!), so this has been a good read. It isn’t in my opinion as good as some of his other books (most notably “Notes From a Small Island” which was one of the funniest books I’ve read), as I’m not as keen on the focus on political history that seems to be a feature so far. However overall I’m enjoying it as it contains Bill Bryson’s typical humour and great little stories and anecdotes!

Once I’ve finished Bill Bryson, I think I’ll move on to “The Long War” and then “The Long Mars”, the next two books in the series of books co authored by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I really love Terry Pratchett and there is enough of his stylistic humour in these books to make me enjoy them, even if the genre is not something I’d necessarily pick out to read.

So, back to some more summer reading! Any books you’ve read recently you would recommend? I’m looking for some more for my trip to Sardinia so I’m very open to suggestions! Until next time, bye for now!

Great Physics Bake Off!

For the next few blog posts I intend to share with you all a few of my interests beyond Physics (although some of them maybe a bit sneaky and incorporate physics into them too. Because well, physics is pretty awesome right?). I have many and varied interests. This is probably a product of my parents only allowing a limited amount of TV/computer time a day when I was little - to be honest though it was a good thing in end. Ok yes mum, you were right... Anyway, I enjoy lots of things, not all of which will get a mention here (I know you all were desperate to hear about my first forays into Morris dancing, but unfortunately I don't have the time. And well you might giggle. Although it is actually so much harder than it looks and also loads of fun!)

So back to the blog. This week, in honour of the fact that the latest series of the Great British Bakeoff has begun recently I'm going to talk about something I really enjoy - you guessed it - baking! For any of my non British readers who don't know what this is - it's a TV series where amateur bakers compete for the title of 'best British baker'. Yes I hear you - how can baking be that exciting? Well trust me it's possible. The tense atmosphere as the competitors wait for Paul and Mary's comments ("Well you've got a nice crumb, although it's a bit dry and I really can't detect the lavender"), the emotions running high when a baker's scones haven't risen properly, the euphoria as someone manages to construct an elaborate model of the Eiffel Tower made entirely out of shortbread - it's great. Love it (like record numbers of the British population - I'm not the only one!) or loathe it one thing I think we can agree on is that baked goods are great. And an hours worth of looking at cake per week is an hour worth spent in my opinion. 

So baking. I thought it would be fun to come up with some physics themed baked goods for your delight. Whilst I love baking, I can't make all of these in one week, so most are just described for you. When I get round to making them (and trust me I plan to!) you can be assured of a photo accompanied by a recipe, which I'll update on here as I go.

Bread

"Entangled strings" (string theory) Plaited loaf - a Great British Bake-off classic - Paul Hollywood's 8 strand plaited loaf. A recipe for those who enjoy complicated recipes (although if you ever enjoyed making complicated friendship bracelets this is the recipe for you! Click on the photo of my finished creation for the recipe!

The finished creation! 

Cake

Nebula cupcakes - a lovely little set of chocolate cupcakes topped with icing and edible glitter and stars - also brilliant as the messier you are with your glitter the more like nebulas they look!

Biscuits

Quark macaroons - 6 flavours! You can even ice the top with up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange symbols if you want. 

Desserts

"Brownie-n motion" and shake in a bag ice cream - stir through some chocolate chips and scatter some on top to demonstrate the random dispersion of particles in a fluid (well sort of!). This is also the best ever brownie recipe I've come across. Serve with ice cream made by shaking the ingredients in a bag of ice - makes lovely ice cream, can cater for different dietary requirements, shows physics in action and is a great science experiment for kids. What's not to love?!

Pastry

Newton's apple pie - I was actually lucky enough to have some apple from Newton's apple tree (in the physics department of York university they had a cutting of the tree which grew and produces apples). Whilst this will have to use normal cooking apples, maybe you could come up with other ways of making it a Newton Apple pie? Decorate it with extra pastry, serve it by whizzing it across the table and demonstrate those laws in action! Maybe I'll even write out the recipe in Newtons!

EDIT: Just realised I missed an obvious opportunity to make a Pi Pie. Maybe I still will...!

If you haven't seen the ASDF movies, click here. You must!

So well as you can see some of these sound delicious if I say so myself! Can you come up with any creative physics themed baked goods? Keep checking back here to catch up on my progress and check out the recipes!