My Work Experience Week
My name is Rebecca; I am a year 12 student studying Maths, Chemistry and Geography. I decided to do my week work experience with Think Physics because I believe not enough information is given to students about studying and finding a career in STEM. I am the only female in my AS Chemistry class, illustrating perfectly the lack of students, particularly girls, engaging in STEM and why the work done at Think Physics is so important.
As an A-level student not studying Physics, I thought I had waved any hope of a career in engineering goodbye, but within an hour of my arrival at Think Physics Emma had already given me hope by bringing the idea of a foundation year to my attention. Something I had never thought of before, options were opening already – a brilliant start to the week. After meeting the team and settling into the office I began my research into foundation degrees, Think Physics and wind power.
My first morning was spent researching a pharmaceuticals company called MSD which has a site in Cramlington, now home to two 130m high wind turbines. Due to the nature of the A levels I had chosen to take I don’t get much opportunity to do my own research into an area so the task allowed me to build up my weaker research skills as well as find out about a fascinating company and renewable energy (a field I had been considering). Soon it was time for lunch and some surprisingly good cafeteria food as well as a sit down in the staff lounge. Next up, going to help bring back giant tool box trolleys from a shop in town for a workshop later on the week, although it admittedly did look slightly odd three people speed walking through town with giant wheely tool boxes. The afternoon was spent packing up lots of electrical equipment into those giant tool boxes.
Tuesday was the most exciting day of the week, arriving at 9am dressed in Think Physics green, today was a day of workshops. First up, mechanical engineering with a year 5 group who made little robots. Despite children being one of my biggest fears, it was an incredibly enjoyable morning helping them to create their robotic orchestra. In the afternoon I got to go back to my own school as they were running an after school club with Think Physics for younger year groups. It was great to see how intelligent they were and how confident they had become with the electrical components used to make a chain reaction of structures they had designed – something alien to me. They all seemed to really enjoy it and I did too.
The next morning I began with some more research and blog writing. The office was a lovely work environment and felt very comfortable. That afternoon I was inputting some data for the team from some year 3 questionnaires which I found quite fascinating. It even inspired a project I intend to take up next year studying what happens throughout their time in school to put girls off science. When inputting the data I found that generally, many of the girls said they really liked science and were really good at it, which made me think about why is it that they don’t carry on and develop careers in science as much as boys will do. As I finished a bit early, I helped to make some windmills to be used later on in the week for a workshop about wind power.
Thursday, my favourite day of the placement, saw the team in a day of meetings to review the proje
ct, so I was given the important task of creating a makedo example. This for me was a perfect opportunity to spend two hours making a rather large cardboard castle complete with an impressive opening door and working drawbridge. This was by far the highlight of the week for me and I was quite impressed and proud of the finished product. At this point a surprising amount of babies joined the team briefly. After dinner I started to cut out extra propellers for our wind workshop the next day.
An early start on Friday saw me at 8am en route to Excelsior Academy where the wind power workshop was to take place. The workshop involved calculating the power needed to put on a music festival and how to generate that electricity in an environmentally-friendly way, this is where the windmills come into things. The groups got to create small wind turbines and test them using a fan to see if they could life a weight. They then tried to modify the design to make it as efficient as possible. It was a fun way of looking at renewable energy and how it can affect us all even if we don’t necessarily think it does.
This week has been incredibly useful for me and a great experience. I really feel like I have gained a lot out of the placement in a really interesting project. I would love to come back and do it again. Although I was pretty nervous before starting the week as I wasn’t a physics student, the team have been very welcoming and adapted to my interests and shown me it isn’t just about doing physics, it is about the importance of engineering and wider STEM and giving young people the experience and information to get them to be excited about the endless career opportunities STEM creates. I highly recommend this placement to any science student willing to work hard and wanting to gain from their experiences.
Still excited. I made my way up the long flight of stairs to the office and sat down to be told what my activities for the day would be. To my delight I was told I would be participating in an electronics practical activity all day where I would get to learn a lot of new things and try some new practical skills. I headed down with Jamie to the workshops and labs where there were a lot of workshops with exciting and cool looking experiments and practical’s going on in them. I heading into the lab that I was going to be working in and got started on my task which was to create a pair of speakers that could be used. I started by soldering on the components to the circuit board; my soldering skills were a little bit rusty but I had got the hang of it again in no time.
We arrived at the works after having a little bit of a struggle to find its location, to see that Emma and the woman we would be interviewing were already waiting for us. We received some rather funny boots and a coat to wear as we were expecting to film the interview outside where we needed to obey health and safety rules. Laura gave us a tour of the site where we learned a lot of new facts that we wouldn’t have ever expected, such as: the water only takes 8 hours to be fully cleaned and put back in the river; this was very surprising as I thought it would take a lot longer. Next we moved onto the filming, I was holding up the microphone as Jonathan filmed and Emma asked the questions. This turned out to be a lot harder than I may have thought at first! The trip to the water works was extremely interesting and I had a great time, I never knew somewhere like that would be so interesting.
‘Where do we start?’ I thought looking around at all the different colours. However we soon got into the flow of things and had one of the parts assembled in about an hour, we then had to build the base of the roller coaster which proved even more difficult as the photo we had to work from was very small and a little blurry. So this is where me and Jamie used our skills and created our own base that would hold up the structure. Within 15 minutes we had a very sturdy base which we attached to the roller coaster. It was the moment of truth, would our beautifully coloured roller coaster work, we brought Jonathan in to film as we sent a small ball down, it had worked! This meant that we could now disassemble it and create instructions so that children could make it up when they used it in a workshop. We then got chatting with Jonathan and physics student volunteer Andrew about the physics around the roller coaster. It seemed like what looked like a simple plastic toy wasn’t so simple at all when it came down to the physics of it.
After lunch I headed down to the lab and took a seat amongst the undergraduate students and Pietro gave us a few tips on how to do the wind farm efficiency experiment that we were set. We got going and managed very well with the task there were a few pieces of equipment that were new to us but we managed to get the hang of them. It seems we did so well that even Pietro was impressed ‘You already know everything, let’s get you out in the industry now’ he said… that made me laugh. After we had finished the experiment Pietro checked it and asked us if there were any specific areas of physics that we liked. I explained that I find astrophysics quite interesting. He proceeded to show me a hydrogen lamp that they have that allows you to see the light spectra emitted from the lamp, it was a very interesting piece of equipment which I wouldn’t normally get to see or use. He then showed us a few more pieces of apparatus they have in the lab and explained the different types of physicists that exist. The lab session flew by as it seemed like not long after we started it was time to leave, Pietro gave me his email address and told me if I have any questions he would be happy to answer them. I headed down to the office to this; my last entry to my blog that I have been working on this week.
Later on in the day we met with the technician for the electrical engineering department and we were introduced to the equipment and what undergrads get up to. He then gave us some equipment and showed us how to assemble a simple circuit. We spent the following hours soldering and building up the circuit. My last experience of electronics and soldering was a few years ago, so it was good to be learning the skill again, especially as I wasn’t too good at it in year 9. Surprisingly my circuit worked, and we were able to use it as an amplifier for music. After this we did some advanced work on resonances and frequencies of sound waves, using oscilloscopes to determine the optimum height for the amplifier in a small cupboard. We also went on a tour of the faculty department and were able to see the renewable energy solutions that have put Northumbria on the map. It was interesting to see some of the postgrad work that was being done on the campus, and was insightful to see the real world applications of physics and electrical engineering.
Arriving early, we got straight down to work helping the team prepare for a workshop with students in secondary school. We helped assemble and the order hundreds of Knex parts to build a rollercoaster. We also got the chance to design a crucial part of the build, the supporting tower, and it was good to put some mechanical lessons I’ve learnt at school into practice to make sure the tower was steady and would hold up the structure. During this time we learnt some more about the work the team does with secondary schools. Unfortunately I had to leave early as I was ill, and I missed the rest of the day, but I was preparing to come back eager and make no more public transport mistakes the following day!
