Books: An update

At the end of 2015 I posted about the books that I head read during the year.  I resolved to read more in 2016, and have managed to do it.  I expect I'll give a mini-review of them all at the end of the year here on the blog, and you can get a sneak preview on the Goodreads website, if you really want to.

As I noted in the 2015 post, I actually read loads of books, in the form of books for toddlers.  I can't realistically keep track of all such books I read, but for one month, in October, I attempted to do so.  Here is the list:

Miffy

Miffy at school 

My First Numbers

Peppa’s Easter egg hunt

The Fire Engine

Peppa’s Gym Class

Peppa’s Pumpkin Party

Daddy pig’s Fun Run

Daddy Pig’s Office

Daddy Pig’s Office

Mum’s New Hat

The Golden Touch

Ouch!

The Monster Hunt

Funny Fish

Poor Old Rabbit

I Can Trick a Tiger

Dad’s Birthday

Missing!

Little Miss Sunshine and the Wicked Witch

Little Miss Naughty and the Good Fairy

Danger Dragon

Hungry Floppy

The Spaceship

Dad’s Birthday

Missing!

Floppy and the Bone

Girls' Potty Time

Mr. Nobody

Mr Topsy Turvy

Mr Messy

Mr Tumble's Sunny Day

The black and white baby book animals

Bunny and Bee can't sleep

My First Trucks

Mr Grumble

Mr Perfect

Poor old rabbit!

Super dad

I can trick a Tiger

The Monster Hunt

Ouch!

Missing!

The old tree stump

The spaceship

My very noisy digger

Hungry Floppy

Silly Races

Dad's Birthday

Funny Fish

Mum's New Hat

Floppy and the Bone

Dragon Danger

Blue chameleon

Numbers

Frieda and Bear

Hello Kitty first words

Winter 

Guess how much I love you

Hello Kitty first words

Winter

Hello Kitty first words

Picnic Time

The snowman

Silly races

Dad's birthday

Funny Fish

Mums new hat

Hungry floppy

The spaceship

The old tree stump

missing!

Spike the spider

Baby Animals

Peppa favourite things

Peppa at home

Peppa at playgroup

peppa's garden

Peppa's Friends 

Peppa's family

Looking After Gran

Guess How Much I Love You

Winter

Hello Kitty First Words

Spike The Spider

Baby Animals

I can treat a tiger

The monster hunt

Dragon danger

Floppy and the bone

Miffy is crying

Miffy at the seaside

Miffy the fairy

Miffy at the zoo

Miffy and the new baby

Spike the Spider

Hello Kitty First Words

The Golden Touch

Picnic Time

Funny fish

Dad's birthday

Silly Races

The snowman

Bod's Dream

Bod and the cherry tree

Peppa's new neighbours

Peppa at playgroup

Peppa's friends

Peppa at home

Peppa's favourite things

Peppa's garden

Peppa's family

Lines that wiggle

Zog

Meg and Mog 

The golden touch

Mountain rescue

Looking after gran

Arctic adventure

Hello Kitty first words

Owl babies

Owl babies

Zog

Mr lazy

The very hungry caterpillar

The story of the little mole who knew it was none of his business

Mr noisy

Spot loves bedtime

Jack and the Beanstalk

Aye aye

Jack and the beanstalk 

Meg and Mog

Spot goes to school

Where's Spot?

Spot's First Christmas 

Zog

The golden touch

The hairy-scary monster

Arctic adventure

Pip and Posy The Snowy Day

Pip and Posy The Big Balloon

Dentist Trip

Super dad

Poor old rabbit

I can trick a tiger

The monster hunt

Dragon danger

Floppy and the bone

Spot says good night

Bread and jam for Frances

Peppa's Pumpkin Party

Miffy's bicycle

Miffy's birthday

Miffy in hospital

Miffy at School

Peppa's Easter egg hunt

The fire engine

Peppa's gym class

As you may have noticed, I read many books several times.  I include the cover of one of them at the top of the post, since I always like to have an illustrative picture when I make a blog post.

Another MPhys publication

In an automatic list of announcements of papers published in the latest edition of Journal of Physics G, I noticed a paper co-authored by one of our (University of Surrey's) MPhys students on her research year placement.  The paper, entitled The PROSPECT physics programme, describes a project taking place at a research reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to study neutrino oscillations.    

Neutrinos are very light elementary particles that are created in nuclear processes such as beta decay.  As far as we currently understand, there are three flavours of neutrino, associated with three different particles:  The electron neutrino, the muon neutrino and the tau neutrino.  When any of these neutrinos are created they are fully of one of these three types.  The oscillations begin as the neutrinos travel through space, and find that they oscillate between the different flavours, so what starts as an electron neutrino will oscillate between the three different flavours.  This effect has been observed by a couple of experiments (Daya Bay and Double Chooz) which both looked at neutrinos as observed at some distance (at least a kilometre) from the nuclear reactors which are the source of the neutrinos.  PROSPECT is designed to look for very short range changes in neutrino flavour by having the detectors very close (a few metres) to the reactors, to help understand the nature of neutrino oscillations, and potentially look for some hypothetical neutrino-like objects. 

The apparatus for the experiment is still being built and tested, and the paper is something of a statement of intent and progress report for the project.  Our student, Brennan Hackett, is working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on the detector assembly that is being placed close to the High Flux Isotope Reactor (pictured in this post).  Congratulations to Brennan on what I think is your first physics publication (and all while an undergraduate student)!

Seaborg in the Times Crossword

Yesterday, the Times Crossword featured the clue "Old US scientist bags ore for breaking down (7)". Seasoned solvers of cryptic crosswords will spot that "bags ore" has 7 letters, and that "for breaking down" could reasonably indicate that one should make an anagram from the 7 letters.  That leaves the rest of the clue "Old US scientist" as the definition.  The answer is Seaborg. 

Now, I wouldn't necessarily have thought that Glenn Seaborg was famous enough to feature in a crossword, but with this kind of clue where you have a shortish anagram to work with, it's often the case that you (or at least I) figure out a plausible answer then have to look up to check if you are right.  Seaborg was a nuclear physicist or nuclear chemist (them being really the same thing) who worked at University of California, Berkeley, where he was famous for research into making transuranium elements -- those elements heavier than Uranium which are not found in primordial matter, and need to be synthesised in the lab.  Element number 106 was named after him, as seaborgium.  

"Until general disarmament has been achieved..."

I moved house a little over a year ago, so naturally many of my things are still in boxes piled up around the place.  Rifling through one of them today, I came across this pamphlet issued by the government in 1963 entitled "Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack".  It's pretty sobering reading.

The first line of the introduction reads "The primary purpose of the Government's defence policy is to prevent war; but until general disarmament has been achieved and nuclear weapons brought under international control there still remains some risk of nuclear attack."  I suppose since the time of the publication some progress has been made.  The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed late in 1963 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty came later.  Still we have not been attacked by nuclear weapons, but "general disarmament" does not seem to be on the cards, except as an accidental side-effect of austerity, perhaps.

Oliver Lodge's Past Years

I'm back from my holidays for the summer now.  Like last year, we ended the school holidays with a week in Deal, in Kent, staying in a friend's house that happens to have a lot of physics–friendly books on the shelf.  I again started reading Oliver Lodge's autobiography, and I got a bit further through it than last time.  It's a bit of a painful read at times, with his bleak assessment of parts of his childhood and schooldays (such as the bullying at school and the violence of the schoolmasters) as well as what seems like a bit of an outsider's career in physics (having started at University late, his not having had the background that leads to it at end of schooling), and the description of his courtship with his to-be-wife sounding very Victorian and somewhat excruciating.  Still, it comes across as a very frank and open description of these sometimes-painful things and so rewarding enough to read.   

I only got about half way through the book during my week there, and not therefore on to the parts of his research career where he was investigating psychic phenomena.  Perhaps that is for the best, but I've made a note this time of how far I got through the book, and maybe next year we will be back and I can pick up from where I left off. 

I've checked, and neither Surrey County library nor the University library have a copy.  I'm not sure I want a copy badly enough to secure one by other means.  I used to use the abebooks website before Amazon took them over, but I'm a little uneasy about giving Amazon money, following widely–reported allegations of unpleasant ways they treat their workers.  Are there any other places one can look, do you know?  

Nuclear in New Brunswick

A quick post today to alert anyone who is looking for a permanent position in nuclear physics and uses my blog as their primary source for information, that Rutgers University is advertising for a tenure track, or potentially more senior, position.  Tell them I sent you :-)

I haven't had the pleasure of visiting Rutgers University, but I do know some of the work they are involved in, thanks to them employing some of our MPhys students for year–long research projects.  Those students have been physically placed at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, though working for Rutgers, helping to develop the Oak Ridge Rutgers University Barrel Array (ORRUBA).  The included in this post is from a talk by Prof. Jolie Cizewski from Rutgers University from a talk at the INPC conference in 2007.  The whole kit has come a long way since then.

Job at UTK

I've had an enjoyable time since coming back from the Nuclear Structure 2016 conference in Tennessee.  I've been for a family holiday in Spain, of the relax-on-the-beach variety.  To be honest, going somewhere hot and lying around not doing much is not my usual idea of a good time, but with two kids, "not doing much" is not an option, and I spent a lot of time in the sea or the pool, playing with them.  Anyway.  Tennessee has cropped up again and prompted me to post:  I received an email this morning saying that there is a post-doc position available in Knoxville.  As someone who once held a post-doc position at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I can heartily recommend it as a place to spend a few years.  In fact, downtown Knoxville is considerably more fun that it was 20 years ago when I lived there.  Here's the job advert.  

Since I always like to put a picture on each post, I attach a photo from the one day in the beach holiday when we went on a day trip to do some sight-seeing -- to Girona.