I am currently doing the biggest module of third year the pair project. It is worth 20 credits (each year you do 120 credits worth of modules). At the end of last year we were given a big list of projects with descriptions. You pick five from the list and rank them if order of which projects you are most interested in. There are plenty of projects to pick from (I think about 60) so you are bound to find five things that you would be happy to do a project on. There is a whole range of choices from telescope observations, to electronics, to what I am most interested in: black holes. I believe all 5 of my choices were on black holes, so it was pretty much guaranteed that I would be doing a project on something I would enjoy. The department then use an algorithm to maximise peoples preferred choice (this system seems to work pretty well, all but one person got one of their top five choices).
The project I am doing is called Embedding Diagrams: Visualising Black Holes and Wormholes. In my project I am using a programme called Maple to create visual representations of black holes and wormholes. Here is one I made earlier (I think it’s right :L):
If I create any more interesting plots of black holes or wormholes, I’ll make sure to keep you updated. Maple is pretty great it can differentiate, integrate, solve differential equations and plot funky functions that change with time and export them as gifs like this:
When I finish my research and created all the plots I need, I have to write a report and do a presentation. I will describe what my plots show and how embedding are a useful way of representing these properties. I am really enjoying doing the research for this project; I am currently reading a book by Nobel prize winner Kip Thorne about wormholes and black holes and it is fantastic. I will keep you up to date with everything that is going on in my project in future blogs.
“Everything likes to live where it will age the most slowly, and gravity pulls it there.”
-Albert Einstein
Subscribe to George's posts
[…] presentation for my pair project about black holes and wormholes (see my previous blogs about this here and here). You present your work to two academic staff, generally one is an expert in the same […]