Dances with Spot Welders

My goodness it’s been a long time since we had tea together. After a busy Christmas break and the almost impossible sociability of a couple of conferences, the lab seems eerily silent. So I thought it might be nice to reconnect with the outside world.

In my opinion, an empty lab, like any other empty space, is a golden opportunity for loud music and silly dancing. Couple this with the minor delirium induced by spending an entire day sticking tiny wires to tiny bits of metal and come 4 o’clock I reckon anyone would be holding the spot-welder like a microphone and singing persuasive songs to pieces of molybdenum.

And it seems likely that this is set to continue.

At the end of this month I am moving, along with my experiment (aka Science Baby) to a new and rather shiny-looking lab in West Cumbria; the Dalton Cumbria Facility (see here for more info: http://www.dalton.manchester.ac.uk/facilities/dalton-cumbrian-facility/). Currently, I only know of three people, myself included, who will be working there. This means lots of silence and space to fill. As such, I anticipate this blog becoming something of a “Science in the Wilderness” narrative. Setting up an experiment from scratch and then removing to an entirely new facility will, I imagine, bring a whole new set of “exciting challenges” to the generally overwhelming task of completing a PhD. Having safely passed into my second year though, I am now starting to see that some of the work I did last January is coming to fruition and no longer seems so remote and irrelevant. Science Baby has moved from conception through to partially-functioning toddler experiment, taking its first steps just before Christmas, with the switching-on of the detector.

Soon we will be singing and dancing in perfect harmony. I look forward to telling you about our next steps together.