Charlotte – Week Three

Monday – Our final week began with yet another trip! This trip consisted of flying (and crashing) mini drones at Macaw. Macaw work closely with the Oil and Gas industry and are mainly involved with the maintenance of pipelines. I enjoyed talking to the female engineers who work at Macaw and finding out about what they do on a day-to-day basis. I found it useful to be able to speak to the girls in smaller groups and meant they could give more detailed responses as opposed to the generic responses you often get in larger groups.

Tuesday – We kicked off Tuesday with the final trip of the three weeks. Our final trip involved detecting nuclear radiation at Kromek. This was less scary than it sounds as Kromek work to develop solutions for nuclear detection, medical imaging and security screening. We used the GR1-Gamma Ray Spectrometer to analyse radioactive material (which turned out to be store bought salt). I enjoyed the tour of the lab facilities, even if we did have to wear ridiculous hair nets and oversized lab coats.

Wednesday & Thursday – We spent Wednesday and Thursday back at the Think Physics lab. After taking so many trips out and about everyone agreed that we needed these two days just to get caught up with the Nepal project and make the finishing touches to everything we’d been working on over the past 3 weeks.

Friday – Most of Friday will be spent organising the Think Physics lab space and printing our posters and reports ready to present to the think physics team and parents at 2:00pm. Overall, the three weeks have been a great success! It has opened up my eyes to a wide range of new professions and possibilities I had no idea existed, and I feel much more confident knowing where a degree in Engineering or Physics can take me!