LIYSF 2015: Day 6 – Largest Lasers in the World

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This morning I started my day a little differently, with a jog around Hyde park which is located just north of where we are staying. I joined a few others in a jogging group, and this morning went out for a good run/walk with a young man named Kasper from Poland before breakfast.

The Albert hall behind the statue is right beside our building, so the park is very close to where we are staying!
The Albert hall behind the statue is right beside our building, so the park is very close to where we are staying!
This is Hyde Park, very large and open with a shallow lake made in a couple places.
This is Hyde Park, very large and open with a shallow lake made in a couple places.
This is the Royal Albert Monument. You had to pay for a tour to actually learn about it though.
This is the Royal Albert Monument. You had to pay for a tour to actually learn about it though.
This is the Royal Albert Hall located right next to our residence building. Absolutely beautiful exterior, but I still have to take a look inside.
This is the Royal Albert Hall located right next to our residence building. Absolutely beautiful exterior, but I still have to take a look inside.

Today was a specialist lecture day! We had Dr. Ceri Brenner come in for our group’s lecture to talk about her job, research involving the most powerful laser in the world at a government research plant near Oxford University! The laser can heat up a material to 3 million degrees in a trillionth of a second!! She had a fantastic presentation and I learned a lot about plasma, radiation, and the applications of high-powered lasers.

Our group was one of seven different specialist lectures, the other involving topics such as drug resistance, the Higgs Boson, and nanocarbon materials. One really cool thing we did today was get the opportunity to as a group present our topic and what we learned to all of the other 400 students in a 6 minute presentation. There is a great emphasis in science right now in learning how to communicate research effectively to the world. So we had to put together a presentation that was both engaging and informative. Our group decided a song (Seven Nation Army) accompanied by a Dutch guitarist along with interpretive dance would be the best option. And so we quite readily took the title Nerd to a whole new level while we performed the uses of lasers in aspects such as cancer cell treatment. Quite the experience, and then getting to hear the other presentations which involved other creative mediums such as raps, skits, and videos. (Unfortunately I don’t have my own photos of these)

This evening we formed groups of ten and participated in a fairly large crossword puzzle/scavenger hunt. It got quite competitive and involved a lot of running around Kensington! Good fun, and we find out tomorrow which team won!

Tomorrow is a visit to the UCL Mullard Space Research Center!

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