Hopp til innhold

Kategori: Uncategorized

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Fuerteventura
Happy Tuesday everyone! Guess where I'll be in exactly two weeks. I'll be on a plane, on my way to one week of vacation with Alexandra and Anders <3
I din't have a real vacation this summer, since Anders was one month in Asia, and I had to spend a lot of time preparing for the Berkeley trip in August, so I promised Alexandra that we should go on a trip when it had become fall; and that is NOW! We will finally have a week of sun, salt, and sea. We're going on a real just relax and do nothing else than sleep, swim, eat ice cream and maybe have a glass of wine or a beer-trip; to Las Playitas - a small village at the Fuerteventura Island (one of the Canary Islands). The big plan for the week is RELAX, RELAX and RELAX (and SUN) 😉
(the pictures are from the Apollo website)
BUT! Before I can take my to loves and go away, there are some to dos... 
The one, really big thing before we're leaving is of course the TEDx conference in Bergen (saturday October 3rd, if anyone are thinking about going 😉 ). The theme is The (im)possible reinvented, and I think I finally know what I want to talk about this time; I've thought it through, and looked at several possibilities, and yesterday I made the decision that I will actually talk about thorium. I was first thinking about a more general "science is awesome" kind of talk, but then, when I was out walking and thinking, on my way to the University yesterday morning, it just came together - this will (probably) be my most "technical" TEDx talk, so far (who knows if there will be more talks like this in the future...the big dream is of course to give a real TED talk!). So, then I just actually have to make the talk - which will be one of the things I will spend a lot of my time on from now on and until the 3rd.
In addition to the TEDx conference, I have these TALYS calculations I'm doing. I should finish them before I go. If I manage to do that I think it'll be soooo much easier to relax - knowing that I more or less have the material ready for two papers, that "only" have to be written, when I get back to Oslo again 😛 And if I have made most of the tables and most of the figure for my uranium paper, I'll be so relaxed, I will probably be flying...
So, list of TO DOs that have to be done before Sunniva can go on vacation:
  • TEDx - thorium and weapons and stuff (and maybe Titanic...;) )
  • TALYS - finish it all (!)
  • My paper - make the tables and the figures, and place them where they are (probably) supposed to be

In addition I'm co authoring two papers that I have to give my comments on. I will definitely be doing some reading today;) And some writing on my talk. And maybe some TALYS work.

1

Publisert 1 kommentar til Fusion on a Friday
TGIF, since that means 10 more facts. This week I just have to tell you little bit about fusion - Fusion on a Friday 😉 Hope you enjoy it!
  1. Fusion is when two (light) nuclei merge (fuse) together to form a heavier nucleus - it's the opposite of fission. (Read more about fission HERE and HERE)
  2. When very light (atomic) nuclei, like for example hydrogen and hydrogen, or helium and helium, or hydrogen and helium, fuse, they produce energy 😀 😀
  3. The sun (and all other stars in the universe) get their energy from nuclei that are fusing (like hydrogen and hydrogen, or helium and helium, or hydrogen and helium - or other nuclei)
  4. The different elements in the periodic table (up to iron) are made from fusion in stars/suns (but the heavier ones, like gold, or thorium, or uranium, for example are made in the big explosions in space)
  5. If you check the mass of the nuclei you start out with, and the mass of the nucleus you get after the fusion (so, checking how much they weigh, that is), it weighs less after the fusion than before - this extra mass that suddenly is "gone" hasn't really disappeared, but it is released as energy <3 E=mc2 <3
  6. It would be really really cool if we could produce energy from fusion, like the sun is doing - but so far we can't do it...:/ (We manage to get nuclei to fuse, but we use more energy than what we get out.)
  7. Since nuclei is made out of protons and neutrons, they have a positive charge, and therefore they REALLY don't want to get so close to each other that they fuse - it's like trying to push the same pole of two extremely strong magnets together; it doesn't work (but it does work in the sun, since it's very hot and very high pressure, so there the nuclei just fuse all the time :D)
  8. I think it's really fascinating, and a little weird, that you get all this energy from two opposite reactions - either by fusing light nuclei, or splitting heavy ones... <3 nature <3
  9. If you managed to make a fusion power plant, you wouldn't have the problem with radioactive waste, that you get from a fission power plant (a normal nuclear power plant) - so that's very nice...
  10. ...however, fusion is hard :/ We don't manage to do it (without putting more energy in than we get out) yet; but who knows what will happen in the future...? 😉
------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday was date night with my Handsome - we went to Champagneria at Mathallen (our favourite place these days, I think), snacked tapas and drank their delicious self imported Cava (nom nom nom) <3 
He just left for a cabin trip with a friend, and Alexandra and me already miss him...but we will have nice weekend together too, and it will be even better to see him again on Sunday <3<3<3
Happy weekend everyone!

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Love song for nerds (*heart*)
So, Anders and I are watching The Big Bang Theory these days - we've just started season 7, and are kind of speeding through (we've both watches a lot of it before, but never from the beginning to the end, and not together). I know some physicists think the show is making fun (like, in a mean way) of us physicists, but I don't think it does - i just LOVE it <3

Anyway - this weekend we saw the episode where Howard has made a song for Bernadette: If I didn't have you (Bernadette's song), and it really is the sweetest thing I've seen in a long time! 

See/hear the song HERE (seriously, DO IT ;))
Here's the lyrics - what do you think?

If I didn’t have you, life would be blue,
I’d be Doctor Who without the Tardis,
A candle without a wick,
A Watson without a Crick.
I’d be one of my outfits without a Dick-ie.
I’d be cheese without the mac,
Jobs without the Wozniak.
I’d be solving exponential equations
That use bases not found on your calculator,
Making it much harder to crack.
I’d be an atom without a bond,
A dot without the com,
And I’d probably still live with my mom.

And he’d probably still live with his mom.

Ever since I met you,
You turned my world around.
You supported all my dreams and all my hopes.
You’re like Uranium 235 and I’m Uranium 238,
Almost inseparable isotopes.
I couldn’t have imagined
How good my life would get,
From the moment that I met you, Bernadette.
If I didn’t have you, life would be dreary.
I’d be string theory without any string.
I’d be binary code without a one, Cathode ray tube without an electron gun.
I’d be “Firefly”, “Buffy” and “Avengers” without Joss Whedon.
I’d speak a lot more Klingon:
Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam.

And he’d definitely still live with his mom.

Ever since I met you,
You turned my world around.
You’re my best friend and my lover.
We’re like changing electric and magnetic fields:
You can’t have one without the other.
I couldn’t have imagined
How good my life would get,
From the moment that I met you, Bernadette.
Oh, we couldn’t have imagined
How good our lives would get,
From the moment that we met you, Bernadette.

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

#wants
Quiz (radiation course stuff), TALYS (the code I'm using for the analysis of my beloved uranium these days), and Nelly(.com) - that's basically my day today. 
Tomorrow I'm getting up really early, to get Alexandra to kindergarden, before the (way too) early lecture in computational physics... I'm not taking the course, but I'm trying my best to learn more C++ 😛 Then there will be more TALYS, writing on my next paper (yeay!), reading a paper I'm co-authoring, and hopefully no online shopping 😉
Here are some of things I actually ended up buying, by the way:
#buys
jakke // topp // sko

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Risks in perspective (#Selfie)

Today I've been busy all day - doing close to no actual research (#phdlife 😛 ).

A substantial part of this Monday was spent on radiation protection training (which, of course, is very important for us to be able to do the research we're doing - so it's not like the day was wasted...it just feels a little bit like I didn't do "anything"), and I just have to share this list where the risk of radiation exposure is sort of put in perspective. This list gives an estimate of basically how many days of your life you have to say bye to, when you do different things:

  • smoking 20 cigarettes a day: 2370 days (6.5 years)
  • being 20% overweight: 985 days (2.7 years)
  • alcohol consumption (US average): 1 year
  • mining and quarrying: 328 days
  • construction accidents: 227 days
  • car accidents: 207 days
  • home accidents: 74 days
  • receiving a dose of 10 milli Sievert per year, every year for 47 years: 51 days
  • natural hazards (earthquakes, floods): 7 days
The conclusion is that the risk of radiation (even quite "large" doses; 10 milli Sievert in one year is much more than I have EVER received working at the cyclotron laboratory in Oslo, or at any other nuclear lab) is smaller than most other activities you do in your life - just wanted to tell you <3



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


My physicist office look of today was in the comfy style I've become so fond of lately; favourite jeans (HM), #Selfie top (HM), and white (or maybe more like grey now?) Converse.


2

Publisert 2 kommentarer til 10 about thorium

Friday again. Suddenly!

I got a question this week, very general, sort of, so, what's up with thorium, do you have any tips? And also if there is anything going on with thorium in Norway. 
So I decided this Friday's ten Facts had to be about thorium, so here goes:

  1. Thorium is element number 90 - which means it has 90 protons in its nucleus 🙂
  2. The kind of thorium you find in nature has 142 neutrons; so that "natural" thorium is called thorium-232 (90+142=232)
  3. In a nuclear reactor, thorium is changed (or transformed) into uranium-233 (a different kind, or version, of the more "normal" uranium-235) - and that's the reason why I'm studying that type of uranium even though I say I'm sort of working on the thorium fuel cycle 😛
  4. Thor Energy is a Norwegian company that is developing fuel pellets (nuclear fuel) made from a mixture of thorium and plutonium 😀
  5. The halflife of thorium-232 is around 14 billion years - it's the naturally occuring radioactive element with the longest halflife (if the halflife was infinite it would just be a normal, stable element 😉 )
  6. If you use thorium as a fuel in a reactor, you will produce small amounts of uranium-232, and that's kind of an issue since it makes the used thorium fuel extremely "hot" - meaning that it's very radioactive, and if you handled it the same way you handle used uranium fuel, you would get a lethal dose of radiation in a very short time
  7. The other major issue with thorium based fuels is that you have to mix it with something that will give you neutrons, since thorium needs neutrons to be changed into uranium-233, before it can fission (which is how you get any energy from the fuel in a nuclear power plant)
  8. Many people are very positive towards using thorium as a fuel in Molten Salt Reactors, but thorium can actually be used in any kind of reactor
  9. If you want to read something serious about thorium, and its use as fuel in nuclear power plants, you should read for example THIS from World Nuclear Association, or THIS from IAEA (The International Atomic Energy Agency) <3<3<3
  10. Thorium was discovered by a Swede, in Norway, and it was named after Thor - the Norse god of thunder 🙂

-------------------------------------------
Yesterday I celebrated Kathirne Aspaas' new book - Rosa er den nye pønken - where I was invited to talk about pink science. It was a short, Norwegian version of Why science should be more pink, that you can watch HERE 😉 I was quite nervous, but I really got a lot of positive feedback after my little talk, so I guess it went much better than I was fearing...
I was of course wearing my red and pink rose dress - sort of "the Dress" (yes, capital D) for me; I always feel great when i put that on. It was something I just bought on sale from Ellos around two years ago, and now I regret I didn't get three of it, because it really is my favourite dress <3

TGIF - great weekend to everyone <3

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Rosa
Hei alle fine ❤️
Denne uken er busy på så mange måter... I tillegg til at det er ca fullt fokus på fisjon av uran-233/234 med Jon (min fantastiske britisk/franske veileder), så er dette er den store boklanseringsuken: i dag bærer det rett fra kontoret til lansering av flinke Vibekes Fængsruds superkjappe mattebøker, og i morgen er det Kathrine Aspaas' Rosa er den nye pønken som skal feires - da skal jeg til og med holde et miniforedrag, om rosa forskning, selvsagt 😉 Blir såååå gøy, både i dag og i morgen! ❤️
------------------------------------------------

Fikk forresten litt "kritikk" forrige uke da jeg var på God Morgen Norge, om at bloggen min jo egentlig ikke er så veldig rosa, og at det jo er fyktelig lite dagens outfit...:/ Derfor slenger jeg på en selfie for å bøte litt på skade/inntrykket (jeg vil jo ikke være en dårlig rosablogger, liksom 🙁 ):
Jeg prøvde fire forskjellige antrekk (tror jeg - litt avhengig av hvordan "antrekk" defineres...) før jeg til slutt endte opp med en gammel favoritt, som jeg rett og slett hadde glemt; en sort topp fra Indiska, med litt sånn tidlig 1900-tallsfeeling, kombinert med favorittjeansene og orange, høye hæler. Lover at jeg skal prøve å bli bedre på outfits, altså - har bare rett og slett hatt mer inspirasjon på forskningen, i det siste; og dermed mer comfy outfits (Converse ❤️❤️❤️)
Nå blir det ca fire timer med fisjonsanalyse sammen med Jon, før jeg skal plukke med meg Anders, og vi skal bevege oss mot gamle Nobilis for å feire fineste Vibeke. Omg, jeg gleder meg!

2

Publisert 2 kommentarer til 4 years!!! (oh. my. god.)

I can't believe it's been four years already!
Four. Years.
Since I started blogging, about nuclear physics and research and stuff.
Four years since September 8th, 2011, when I wrote my first blog post ever; about how I was a little bit hung over, and couldn't really concentrate about making the conference talk I was supposed to be making - so I made a blog instead. I do not regret that today <3 (I don't really say that I was hung over in that first blog post, but that was the real reason why I had trouble concentrating...;))
 
When I realized that it was my fourth anniversary today, I made a decision: One year from now, exactly, I will hand in my PhD thesis. It's perfect timing, since I have funding until the end of December 2016, and it takes about three months from the thesis is handed in, until you can defend it - meaning that if all goes according to my plan, I don't have to sell everything and move out on the streets as I'm waiting for my thesis defence 😛
I've celebrated my decision/goal, by working on the analysis of fission of uranium-233. It's been a very good day, and supervisor-Jon seems quite happy and excited about the results we are seeing now... I can't tell you exactly what it is yet, but hopefully there will be a new article in a couple of months (maybe earlier???), and then I'll give you all the details of this plot, and then some more - I PROMISE <3<3<3

A million thanks to all of you who read my blog - I hope you will continue to "follow" me as I try to finish this PhD project. *kisses* 

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Obsessing…

Monday!

Meaning another week with my plot... Obsessing about my plot. Trying to make it just perfect. Try different colours. Different styles. Obsess - science style.
On Friday I was actually thinking that this is it, that I was finished with this part of the data analysis; but then, today, I realised that other people have done similar things (analysed other uranium nuclei, for example), and that they have put five of those black pumps in the plot, instead of just four - so now I'm thinking about doing the same thing. 
As you can see I've added more colours to it now; there's another, lighter pink colour, a yellow-orange'ish colour, and the uranium-235 is bright green - since someone suggested that as a colour 🙂 Maybe you have suggestions for the black bumps? They don't have to be black...;)

-------------------------------
Right now I'm having a glass of wine with supervisor Jon - he's here for the week, and in addition to obsessing about this plot, I've shown him where I am in the entire analyse thing. We looked at a couple of other plots too today, and he said that there's definitely a cool paper in there...:D (Of course we don't know for sure yet, but I choose to be optimistic <3 ) If you follow me on Snapchat (I'm sunnivarose, of course), you've seen the plot that Jon was so excited about.

1

Publisert 1 kommentar til Fission on a Friday, part 2 (10 FACTS)
I had almost already forgot about 10 fact on a Friday, but luckily I remembered (before it was too late), so here is 10 (more) facts about fission - Fission on a Friday, part 2:
  1. in a reactor the nucleus does not split into two equally big parts - fission is not symmetric (one part/fission product is bigger/heavier than the other one)
  2. the term "fission" was borrowed from biology - binary fission, which means division at a cell into two or more parts 🙂
  3. in a fast reactor, the nucleus actually splits into two equal (or close to equal) nuclei, so fact number 1 is only true for the reactors we have today
  4. the fission products are radioactive 
  5. since the fission products are radioactive they produce heat
  6. since the fission products produce heat, the fuel in a reactor must be cooled even after a reactor is turned off (and that was the problem at Fukushima - cooling of the used fuel/fission products)
  7. fission was discovered by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in December 1938
  8. Lise Meitner was the one who really understood, theoretically, what was going on (with fission), but she was a women and a jew at a time in history when it was not the best to be both woman and jew (especially not to be jewish, maybe) - she never got the nobel price for fission, but she should have had it together with Hahn
  9. the nucleus (like uranium-233 or uranium-235 or plutonium-239, for example) fissions much more easily when they are hit by really slow neutrons - instead of fast neutrons, with a lot of energy, which is maybe what you would first think was a good idea for dividing something into two…
  10. since you get extra, free, neutrons when a nucleus fissions, you can get a chain reaction and produce energy 😀
Wish you all a really good Friday, and a great weekend <3

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til kPink+7
Remember my plot from yesterday? And how happy and proud I was because I managed to make labels for the different data?
Well, today I learned (from Gry - thank you, sweetie <3) how to make it pink - and by my self I found out how to make it the exact right kind of pink. It's called kPink+7 <3<3<3, and it's just perfect, and if you think that I'm not "brave" enough to use this colour for my uranium data in a scientific article, you're wrong 😉
Yeah, and also I did the tweaking of the data points as I also talked about yesterday (I didn't spend all day on making pink data points :P)
------------------------------------------------------------
Speaking of pink; tomorrow I'm going to be a guest at God Morgen Norge, together with Kathrine Aspaas, who has just written a book called Rosa er den nye pønken - tune in between nine and ten (I'm guessing something like nine thirty, but I'm not 100% sure).
PS: What other kind of colours should I use in the plot?