# STEM Community Day at Loughborough, 16th March 2019

Every year as part of British science week Loughborough University opens its doors to the community to host a range of STEM based activities. This year there are several activities organised by my group and in coordination with the UG reps:

If you’re in the area drop by for a chance to get messy, learn something new, or just have some fun! I will be posting summaries of each activity over the next few weeks.

# Science in the Park 2019 – Light Painting

I have added rough times for the images below. They are organised by group(s) for the two separate SD cards that were used. If you do not see your photo in the top, please make sure to scroll through to the bottom for the other SD card.

# Characterisation Methods in Solid State and Materials Science

I’m in the process of writing a textbook for the IOP E-book portfolio that will focus on characterisation techniques, in particular for solid state physics.

This will include:

• X-ray and Neutron Techniques
• Microscopy Techniques
• Spectroscopy Techniques
• Magnetic, Electric, and Thermal Characterisation Techniques.

And will, as far as possible make use of open source data to provide real world problems for students to tackle (focusing on data analysis).

I am therefore, actively looking for journal articles that may use one or more of these techniques and where the original datafiles are accessible. If you have work that you think would be relevant then please contact me. Of course all relevant files and journal articles would be referenced.

# Double Rainbow

Can you see the double rainbow?

Ever noticed how the order of the colours changes for the second rainbow (red – yellow – green – blue – violet…)

Typically rainbows are formed when light is refracted (bent) through a raindrop.

A double rainbow forms when light is refracted twice in a raindrop, and occurs commonly when the sunlight is low in the sky. See here for more.

# The invisible rod

Challenge: How can you make a quartz rod invisible with some water, sugar and a beaker?

$n_{1}sin(\theta_{1})=n_{2}sin(\theta_{2})$
So you might imagine that if we can change the rod, or the liquid itself, so that light entering from behind the beaker does not refract further on entering the quartz rod, we can effectively make the quartz rod invisible. To do this we want to match up the refractive indices ($n_{1}, n_2$).