DAY 3

Okay, so I ran out of time last night to review day 3 of LIYSF 2014 and I’ve found one of the great challenges of this forum is to find time for everything! I will try to keep it compact…

It was an early morning because I had a tour to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at 7:45. By misunderstanding the schedule, I had to leave my wonderful breakfast and run to where my group was meeting just before they left without me! I was so glad I didn’t miss it:

At NPL, scientists are comissioned by different industries for testing standards and measurements of anything from crunchiness of cookies to the pitch of car horns. Moreover, they also work in precisely measuring the SI units of mass, time, length, etc. We toured their hydrogen fuel cell laboratory (below left) and their acoustic chamber (right) which has walls that dampen out any sound.

 Although the weather has been extraordinary these few days in London, today it was overcast and we actually had lightning really close by. After returning, I got to meet the team from South Africa (my family heritage) and met another Afrikaaner:

Next, Professor Dame Robinson showed how proteins in gaseous state can be studied through mass spectroscopy to learn about their folding properties:

Now everyone was scrambling to prepare their posters for the famous LISYF bazaar night! There are so many top-notch projects here! Many of these students have just finished highschool and I can’t even understand much of their research (Ouch). In fact, the over 100 posters were set up in the same room as the big can of spam and eggs and the jet engine turbine:

 Below is me and my Scanning Tunneling Microscopy project. Also, the brilliant kid named Perry from USA has designed a heavy metal filtration system using his own lab-grown carbon nanotubes!

 After being awed by all the exceptional science projects, some of us ended a late night in the common room playing ping pong, pool, Foosball, and singing to the guitar and ukulele.

Tomorrow we figure out who’s been picked as the top ten from the poster night to give presentations to the student body…

Etienne