Convergence failures and hidden electronic states: the world of computational chemistry
With just over a week before 4th year project reports are due in for Natural Sciences, everyone’s quietly busying away attempting to tie everything together. My project has been half computational and half experimental, and although much of my effort is now in writing up I can’t convince myself to stop running simulations to try […]
Rounding off the end of term and the Natural Sciences Newsletter
As 5pm came around students from all years of the degree gathered at the nearest pub in the tradition of celebrating the end of second term exams, and although fourth years are no longer subjected to such things it was still apt as a send off for Easter! The week also saw the end of […]
Looming deadlines
There’s now just three weeks left of term and everyone’s pushing to get the results they need to write up their project reports. Those in third year are in dedicated project time, and both years are now split into groups of similar topics to present their work each week in project seminars. These are great […]
Numerical methods, argon plasma and planning for the future
The second term is now well underway and it already feels considerably different to before Christmas. With microcontrollers soldered beyond recognition and the report handed in, the fourth year programming module now focuses on numerical methods, which are used to approximate solutions to functions that can’t be solved exactly. One of the best-known examples of […]
Preparing for Next Term
As the end of term is fast approaching, I’ve been spending every available moment in the lab trying to finalise things before Christmas. Due to the nature of my project, the equipment we’re using takes a considerable amount of time to optimise for what we’re trying to achieve, and this isn’t always easy! However, now […]
The World of Research
Something that’s becoming increasingly apparent is just how much the fourth year is geared towards preparation for the world of research. Every other week fourth year natural sciences students present their progress in project seminars, where peers and staff discuss what direction to head in next. This can be really useful in giving points of […]
Trying to find the end of your project report and planning the Inaugural Employability Symposium
With the exams that marked the end of term fast becoming a distant memory, the mass exodus for Easter has reduced the campus to a refuge for those engrossed in dissertations or revision. I fall into the first camp, now trying to piece together the past 20 weeks of project work into a coherent report. […]
The final project seminar and the viability of holding The Winter Olympics on Enceladus
With the final project seminar drawing to a close, the panic for the approaching final deadline was mediated only with thoughts of this Friday’s exams, making this week pretty hectic in terms of collecting final sets of data while revising the past few months of material! On the Natural Sciences degree, your project is assessed […]
Metamaterials, speakers from industry, and Winnie the Pooh’s suspected B12 deficiency
Last week marked the end of the electromagnetism and cell communication module, with the accompanying exam only weeks away. As well as a proposal for the design of a new cell-signalling pathway, the second deliverable was concerned with the viability of making someone invisible (or more specifically, if electromagnetic waves can be bent through a […]
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