This Saturday Jake proposed to Louise and they are now engaged. At dinner on Saturday, Louise was given a picture of the engraved message and then Jake asked her hand in marriage.
The proposal was laser engraved using the femtosecond laser in the photon factory. The spot size used was 4 microns and the whole engraving was 100 microns high, about the thickness of a human hair.
Just uploaded an online TrA simulator which you can use to make your own 3D spectrum. The program uses an opensource maths package called Sage which has great ineractive plotting abilities with matplotlib and jmol being used to do the surface plot.
So have a go making your own spectrum.
We have been busy over the last few weeks getting a video made for the RSC video competition.
Jake
Just uploaded a copy of the software PyTrA I have been writing in python to analyse ultrafast transient absorption data in the Photon Factory. It is a first release and I am still working on making it easier to use but here is the current version.
Go to the blog post to download the files.
Jake Martin
Peter the head engineer in the lab built a nice demonstration of wave motion in a multi-pendulum set-up where each pendulum has a different period leading to a 50s cycle. We are planning on building a larger demo which should reduce the frictional effects for the shorter period pendulums.
For a good write up on the physics behind this demo and how to make your own go to this link
A computer generated demo that helps you hear the patterns.
Congratulations to Sarah Thompson from the photon factory for getting into the finals of the 3min thesis competition.
Kids Visiting Venus is a blog about the transit of Venus on the 6th of June. When venus will parially eclipse the sun. There are some cool solar/space experiments and blog posts will be leading up to the transit.
