Hopp til innhold

I admit it; I'm feeling stressed.
Our nuclear physics workshop/conference here in Oslo, where I'm supposed to give a talk (and show RESULTS) is only three weeks away, and my gamma detectors are not yet calibrated. Don't get me wrong: it's not like I'm giving up (I don't think I'm a quitter), but I know there is work to be done. I think I have to go through my plan, and check how I'm doing with my milestones/goals - I'll give you an update tomorrow <3
--------------------------------------------------

I think I could have worked faster, but I really really want to understand this - and make sure I make NO MISTAKES! So today I made this table, and the next step is to try to find the different gamma energies from the table and place them in the plot...hope my "prework" will pay off, and that tomorrow will be successful day 😉

Today I've made this table (with my new favourite: this calculator 😀 ):
So this beautiful table shows the different Q-values for the different reactions that go on in my experiments (oh, yes, there's beryllium and there's carbon and there's oxygen there - even though it would've been nice if it was only uranium...).
The Q-value tells how much energy that is released in a certain reaction: for the first reaction, for example, the Q-value is 4620 keV, which means that when a deutron hits a uranium-233 nucleus, and a proton goes out of that reaction, around 4600 keV (energy) is released ;). If that same deutron hits an oxygen-16 nucleus instead of the uranium-233, and a triton (instead of a proton) is released, the reaction absorbs energy instead of releasing energy: 9406 keV to be (almost) exact...
I also, finally, submitted my application about changing my theoretical curriculum for my PhD degree 😀
----------------------------------------
It's beautiful at the University these days, btw - don't you agree? Love blossoming cherrytrees:)

1

Dear dear readers!
I´m so sorry about my "not being as active as I really want to"-behaviour here at det blog these days, but I´m trying to be a good PhD student and a good mother and prepare talks and fix the apartment and everything...and of course there's something about my internet connection at home these days - meaning, there is no internet for me there (Anders' Mac is fine, but suddenly it's not possible for me to connect) :/

-----------------------------------------------------------

Anyway; hope you understand, and please follow me on Instagram and Snapchat - I've just started to "figure out" Snapchat (haha), and I'm sharing pictures from everyday life at the University (and then some - Alexandra, for example 🙂 ).

I'm @sunnivarose on Insta and Snap, of course 😉

No, I'm not talking about myself, but supervisor-Sunniva, of course 😀
This is what we've looked at today - the ALFNA matrix, and we've tried to figure out some of the gamma peaks that we see (in red); oxygen-17 and beryllium-10:
I just figured out that she's going to South-Africa tonight (for an experiment at iThemba lab), and I almost panicked, because I really need supervision now, since our workshop/conference is soon coming up (early May), where I have to give a talk about the results from my experiment :/ She promised we could Skype, though, so I'm hoping that will work...

I'm not dead, I've just tried to be a good PhD student the last couple of days (and it's been some loooong days)...the title of this post and these pictures more or less tell the entire story:
- change (the sorting code)
- compile (don't forget - like I did yesterday )
- sort the data files
- check the results
- repeat 😉
-------------------------
Tonight I even had sort of a nightmare about my thesis defense: for some reason I didn't start making my trial lecture before 30 minutes before I was going to give it - and the theme of the trial lecture was simply "chlorine" ( and in my dream this was a molecule consisting of chlorine and some other atoms), then I realized I wasn't wearing any shoes (I was barefoot), and there were so many people that had come to see the defense, and then one of the opponents ran away and the other had to go and get him. Luckily I woke up before I started to talk!
I was really stressed when I first woke up, and then I was pretty relieved when I realized it was only a dream - and that my thesis defense will be nothing like this dream. I'm actually planning on having fun that day - when it comes 🙂
Hope you all have a beautiful Friday ❤️

...has been about "programming", or, not really programming, but trying to understand some code. I made some progress, and one of my main "results" from this day is shown below - phdlife... (frustration is a key word here, but at least i didn´t move backwards) <3
Speaking of phdlife; I have a snapchat account where I share my phdlife/behindthescenes moments - feel free to follow @sunnivarose (which is also my name on Instagram and Twitter). I put snaps on my story several times a day; even if I´m very busy and deep into my reading/understanding code/making talks/writing thesis, and don´t really have time to be very active here on the blog, I´m still sharing stuff there 😉

Because of the stupid, stupid snow I wrote more or less three sentences yesterday - making me feel like a complete failure. Also, to make things better, the list of people waiting for a e-mail reply is, like, never ending - making me feel like a bad person :/
Hopefully today will be much better; I´m at my office now, and I have a plan for the entire day:
  1. work on thesis (1 hour?)
  2. talk to Sunniva about progress
  3. meeting
  4. start the calibration of the sodium iodide detectors (rest of the day)
  5. (get A in kindergraden, be with her <3)
  6. work on manuscript for the last Big Bang show
Word of the day is FOCUS, and I hope that I can give myself a big smile when I see myself in the mirror to night 😉
my desk is a huge mess, btw 😛

It´s Monday, and I´m back in Oslo again, at my office, and ready for a new week (drinking my first cup of coffee as we "speek")! 
As always on Mondays I share my PhD week plan: It doesn´t look like there´s much going on the first two days this week, but that´s not entirely true; since they´re filled with filming of the first Big Bang shows *excited* Then there´s very little time for scientific work, but I´ll do more of that when I get to the other half of this week. 
As you can see I´ll be giving a talk about Thorium Mythbusters on Saturday, here at the Institute - will tell you more about this tomorrow (it will be open for eveyone 😉 ).

----------------------------------------------------

Last week went pretty good, and I almost managed to tick of everything on my PhD week plan - except I still haven´t sent a layout for the "bridge chapter" of my thesis to Sunniva. Things took longer than expected (as they always do), and Jon and I spent more time on the introduction chapter than we did on the bridge... Anyway, I should just work on it for maybe an hour, and then it should be possible to and something to Sunniva - hopefully today <3

Main goal this week: keep calm, don´t stress, and make a new, and detailed, PhD plan (and send this to Sunniva on Friday).

3

Good morning!
I forgot it takes forever to get from Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, to the lab in Orsay, south of Paris... Normally I prefer to fly Norwegian to the Orly airport, which is just between the city and the lab, but this time Air France was the only company with reasonable flight times. Anyway, by the time I finally arrived at the lab, I was starving, and had to get something to eat. Then there was catching up to do, and suddenly it was 10:30 PM and I had to go to sleep because I had signed up for the morning/day shift today. I´ve been at the lab since 7 AM, and heavy doses of chocolate and coffee are needed 😉
(Didn´t have time to put on my make up this morning btw., so I look a little...hmmm...don´t really know...:P )

------------------------------------------------

So I told you yesterday that I was embarrassed, and that I would tell you about it - was planning on doing it last night, but now you know how come that didn´t happen. I will tell you now instead:
Last Friday I was on the radio, and one of the things I was talking about was the amount of radioactivity that was present at earth 3.5 billion years ago (when life started). So I was talking about the half-lives of thorium-232, uranium-238 and uranium-235. 
Thorium-232 has a half-life of 14 billion years, so the amount of thorium here on earth is more or less the same as it was 3.5 billion years ago. The half-life of uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, so around half of what was here 3.5 years ago is gone.
So far, so good...
But then I talked about uranium-235, which has a half-life of "only" 700 million years. This means that 3.5 billion years is more or less the same as 5 half-lives of uranium-235. Then I did the mistake: I said that since 5 half-lives of this uranium isotope has gone by, there is one fifth of it left - in other words, 3.5 billion years ago there was 5 times as much uranium-235 on earth, as it is today.
WRONG! 5 half-lives doesn´t meen that there was five times more :/ *feeling stupid*
1 half-life of something means that after that time half of it is gone. Two half-lives means that 3 quarters is gone, three half-lives means 7/8 is gone, four half-lives means 15/16 is gone, and five half-lives means 31/32 is gone - 1/32 is left. 1/32 is around the same as 3%, and 3.5 billion years ago there was 32 times more uranium-235 on earth...!
My excuse is that I was really stressed the day before, and something did NOT feel right (e.g. I didn´t get the right percentage of uranium-235 to have fission and a chain reaction going on in nature - and now I know why 😛 ); but this was a "rookie mistake" - and I shouldn´t have done it 🙁

Hope you can forgive me <3 <3 <3

Tomorrow is an important nuclear anniversary - anyone that can guess what it is? I will tell you tomorrow 🙂

2

New week, new possibilities, new plan.
But first; an important nuclear jubileum today. One of my favourite elements was discovered - or, chemically identified - on this day, 74 years ago 😀 Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Joseph W. Kennedy, and Arthur Wahl bombarded uranium with deuterons and identified PLUTONIUM (element number 94).
Plutonium is of course known for being used in nuclear weapons and reactors, but it´s also used in artificial pacemakers for hearts, and to power units in space probes <3
---------------------------------------------------------
This week is about an exciting fission experiment at the lab in Orsay, outside of Paris, and what I call the "bridge chapter" in my thesis - I have to make a "bridge" between basic nuclear experiments and full core reactor simulations. This is what I see as the most challenging part of my thesis so far (and that´s probably the reson why I´ve been postponing to write for a very long time).
I think it´ll bee a good week, but the next 24 hours are critical ones (a little bit too much to do in too little time)...