torsdag 29. januar 2015

I have a plan...

...sort of...
I have to work on it - but I´m going with the "a not so detailed plan is better than no plan" ;)


So now I´ve told you, and then it´s so much worse if I fail; I have one month to write the first draft of my thesis, and in less than 11 months I have to submit the entire thing!

Of course I should make a better plan as soon as possible, but today was the day when I suddenly got that feeling that I just had to do it - had to get my thoughts out ;) When I make an updated thing I´ll show you again.
Guess there are a lot of people with plans and deadlines out there; for example all high school students who are finishing high school this spring and applying for the universities - good luck to all of you!
<3<3<3

onsdag 28. januar 2015

Kjære Estine! (mattekarakterer og sånn)



På mandag fikk jeg en kommentar her på bloggen; som jeg fikk lyst til å svare som et innlegg, og ikke bare i kommentarfeltet – for jeg tror det kan være interessant for flere enn bare den som kommenterte:


Kjære estine, så gøy at du har lyst til å studere fysikk!

Nå har ikke jeg 100% oversikt over de forskjellige typene matte på VGS i dag (i hine hårde dager, dvs før Kunnskapsløftet, het det MX og MY, og jeg hadde selv den mest ”teoretiske matten” som var MX), men du har jo toppkarakterer (ja, 5 er også en toppkarakter ;) ), så dårlig er du i alle fall IKKE!

Siden du sier du ikke er utpreget kjempegod (men allikevel har de karakteren du oppgir) så gjetter jeg på to ting:
  1. du er jente
  2.  du har måttet jobbe for å oppnå de karakteren du har fått – det har ikke kommet av seg selv

Jenter har ofte lavere selvtillit når det kommer til slike spørsmål, og tror oftere enn gutter at de må prestere bedre i for eksempel matte før de tror at de kan få til noe (for eksempel studere fysikk). Og, ja, jeg har forskning til å støtte oppunder dette utsagnet dersom noen syns dette var en voldsom generalisering å komme med. Uansett; dette har ikke noe å si for videre svar, og om du er gutt så gjelder jo resten av innlegget mitt uansett ;)

Hvis det er sånn at du har lagt ned en god del innsats for å oppnå de resultatene du har, tenker du kanskje at du ikke er så god, for hadde du vært ”god” så hadde det kommet av seg selv(?). Vel, det er bullshit. Det viktige her er at du klarer å få det til! For noen koster det mye, for andre koster det mindre (urettferdig, kanskje, ja, men sånn er livet, og det dealer vi med) – men faktisk tror jeg at det kan være en fordel når man først kommer opp på universitetet å ha opplevd at man faktisk må jobbe litt for å få til ting, for ellers kan man kanskje lettere få seg en ubehagelig overraskelse (de fleste må jobbe for å få gode karakterer på universitetet – noen ganger kreves det HARD jobbing for i det hele tatt å stå, men, åh, så godt en ”seier” smaker etter skikkelig innsats!)
Man sier ofte at det kreves 10% talent og 90% innsats for å få til noe – dette tror jeg gjelder for fysikkstudier óg.

Så til det egentlige spørsmålet: hva slags karakterer hadde jeg?
Jeg hadde full fordypning (2. og 3. klasse) i både matte og fysikk. I matte troooor jeg (jeg begynner åpenbart å bli senil siden jeg ikke husker eksakt) at jeg lå og vippet mellom 5 og 6 begge årene, men at jeg (med en god innsats) klarte å vippe meg opp begge år. I fysikk husker jeg bedre hvordan det gikk: der husker jeg meget klart at jeg fikk 4 i 2. Klasse, for på slutten av vårsemesteret hadde jeg en lengre prat med fysikklæreren min der jeg spurte om han trodde jeg kunne fortsette med fysikk i 3. Klasse, siden jeg tross alt ikke var ”utpreget kjempegod i faget” (jeg følte meg vel strengt tatt fryktelig dårlig, og fysikk var definitivt det faget jeg strevde mest med). Læreren ga meg klarsignal, men sa også selvsagt at jeg måtte jobbe J I 3. Klasse lå jeg og vippet mellom 4 og 5, men klarte å jobbe meg opp til 5 som avsluttende karakter fra VGS (tror det må ha vært astrofysikkapittelet som ”reddet” meg), og jeg husker jeg også fikk 5 på avsluttende, skriftlig eksamen (og den jobbet jeg for).

Håper dette var litt oppklarende ;)
Lykke til videre – forhåpentligvis med fysikkstudier! (Kanskje sees vi på Blindern om noen år…)
Klem fra Sunniva <3





tirsdag 27. januar 2015

Who´s the scientist?



The doctors and the lawyers are (at least in popular culture) successful, nice, good looking people who help others and make good money...but who´s the scientist?

Today I´ve been in Hamar (at Hamar Katedralskole) talking about "my story", and physics and science and scientists and why it´s important and a profession I love <3 Can´t complain about the view from the train either ;)




mandag 26. januar 2015

Busy day

It seems to me like Mondays are always so busy, and the TO DO list is just a never ending story... Is that just me, or do others feel the same way?

Tomorrow I´m going to Hamar to give a talk about science and physics and "my story" and stuff like that - really looking forward to it, but my talk is not entirely ready yet :/ However, I´m getting up early tomorrow, to get Alexandra to kindergarden when it opens, to get to Hamar before 10:30 AM, so now I have to go to sleep! Sleep is so extremely important (like, really!), and since I have time on the train tomorrow I can finish everything there :)

----------------------------------------------------

Love this cover of Taylor Swits "Shake it off", btw...



...and Einsteins letter to Marie Curie - basically telling her that haters gonna hate, a 100 years ago. 
SHAKE IT OFF <3





fredag 23. januar 2015

Blogglisten

Prøver å få være med på Blogglisten, for det er jo liksom ganske viktig, da - og de sier jeg må publisere et innlegg med denne teksten for å verifisere, så da må jeg vel kanskje det da...
<div id="E98B95A6-CAF3-45EC-94DD453BDC1B5C54-3BE64C4B-224A-4E16-AA2E374EC330837E"></div>

Cold

What a day - or, really it´s more like a "no day"; first of all it´s really cold in Oslo today, and I hate to freeze, and even though I try my best not to freeze I still end up doing it anyway (apparently I haven´t learned to dress properly for the Norwegian climate - after just 31 years of practicing :P)... Second, I haven´t done anything today - which of course is not entirely true, but my day has consisted of getting up and getting Alexandra to kindergaden, a doctor´s appointment for me, a dentist´s appointment for Alexandra - and suddenly it was 1 PM before I was at my office - even though I got up at 6 AM, and, well, now I´m gonna spend the next 45 minutes answering e-mails, and then I have to leave to get Alexandra in kindergarden (#mommylife).

The only good thing about the cold weather is that I can wear my favourite, pink hat with bling - I love it so much that I even wear it inside. My big coffee mug, which is a memory from my semester as a master student in Paris (a real Monoprix coffee mug :P ) is also good to hold on to. 
Since this is a pink, girly blog, it´s totally ok (close to recommended) to share 4 almost identical pictures of myself, wearing my pink, blingy hat, in my office. You can also see my two office mates; Lucia <3 and Aylin <3



torsdag 22. januar 2015

#pengerogpoeng - pictures

It´s been a long day, and now I´m really tired, and just want to go to bed...but it´s also been a good, interesting and inspiring day, so before I go to sleep I just have to share some pictures :)
Thank you so much for all the nice comments I got on Twitter, btw!

postergirl

Ole Petter Ottersen

me - in action ;)

Jørn Hurum :)

Jill Walker Rettberg and me after the conference


...and then I was home, and it felt great ...


onsdag 21. januar 2015

Nervous

I guess some (many?) believe I don´t get nervous before I give talks, since I do it "all the time" - and I don´t think I normally seem very nervous...well, I do get nervous. I´m nervous right now. Nervous about my talk tomorrow - feel like I have nothing smart to say. Nothing to contribute to the conference.
It´s probably "healthy" to feel like this from time to time, but it´s NOT fun :/

Of course, the rational part of me tell me it´s not entirely true that I have nothing, but, well, feelings...:P The best thing I can do right now is probably to go to sleep; so that´s exactly what I´m planning on doing in just five minutes ;)
Wish me luck, please <3




 selfie

Which paper is cooler

Einstein versus Chadwick.
E=mc2 versus the neutron.
1905 versus 1932.



I´m trying to decide on which paper I should present in the Article club in two weeks. I´ve "claimed" both Einsteins "Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy-content?" (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared) and Chadwicks "Possible existence of a neutron" (the discovery of the neutron). Both papers are short and sweet (except I don´t believe they really are sweet, they just look like it ;) ), both really basic and important for my field of science...

Which paper is cooler? 
I must admit I get the feeling I like Chadwicks paper a liiiiitle bit more than Einsteins - but I´m not sure yet.
Which paper is YOUR favourite?


tirsdag 20. januar 2015

Talk

Too many hours, working on a talk.
About publishing.
10 minutes.
#phdlife


mandag 19. januar 2015

My Monday

Happy, busy, Monday, everyone!
I my week continues like this I will have done A LOT by the end of it...but it won´t, since I´m with Alexandra from Wednesday afternoon - a good thing about having children is that you have to live a "normal life" (from time to time) ;) Anyway, I´m still at the office, with my fantastic colleagues Gry and Therese (who is writing for her life, a.k.a. finishing her PhD thesis), and this is how my week started:

6 AM - coffee and e-mail in bed
8:30 AM - café and working on a text (I sooo want to tell you about it now, but I can´t yet :/)
9:30 AM - office
10 AM - article club; "Do we really teach physics"
11:30 AM - meeting
1 PM - more text work (have read about hormones, Heisenberg, Newton, Darwin, monkeys, pseudo science, skin conductance, radiotrophic fungus,  and more...;) )

...and I´m still at that "text work" thing...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

my little sister, Carina, turned 25 on Saturday, and the weekend was filled with wine and food and coffee and happy happy love <3<3<3

fredag 16. januar 2015

Finnish National Board of Education

Today was the meeting with the Ludvigsen committee (us) and the Finnish National Board of Education - it truly was a very interesting and inspiring meeting <3 
And if anyone was wondering; no, we did not go to Finland to make a copy of their school in Norway. We went to learn more about their thoughts about their system and their process to get where they are.
In Finland they do not have national tests, so they don´t get that ranking of schools - and what I really loved hearing was that when people ask how they know if a school is a good school or not, they say that every school is a good school :D The teachers are probably less "free" than in Norway, though - with a curriculum that is waaay more detailed than ours (600 pages...!)

-----------------------------------------

After we finally arrived Helsinki last night, we ate dinner at Olo - a fantastic restaurant! We were lucky that the restaurant accepted us, since we were more than an hour late for our reservation...because of snow and ice and hail at Gardermoen (winter - *yuck*). The airport apparently shut down just after we left, so I guess we were lucky that we didn´t get more delayed.
Anyway; the food was absolutely delicious, and I´m so glad they accepted us!











torsdag 15. januar 2015

From the airport

Maybe airport blogging will be my thing in 2015 too - like it was in 2014 (at least the last part of that year) :)
I´m currently at the Seafood Bar at Gardermoen, drinking a latte and waiting for my flight to Helsinki. It´s actually a little chaotic here today (quite a lot of snow outside...), but they don´t say anything about any delays, so I have my fingers crossed.
The goal of the trip this time is to learn about the Finnish educational system (since I´m in Ludvigsenutvalget) - I think it will be very interesting, and I hope I´ll go back to Oslo again tomorrow with new inspiration :D

----------------------------------


I have to share a "Pon & Zi" - they are so cute <3


onsdag 14. januar 2015

2014 *check*

It´s time for another recap of 2014, and then I´m definitely "done" with last year. The first recap was about my biggest moments of 2014, but as a girly blogger it´s essential to show a lot of selfies and outfits, so today I want to share my 12 favourite outfits/selfies of last year <3<3<3

I have also gone through a lot of the outreach/science communication work I did last year (the Institute want to know, of course :) ), and I must say I am actually a little proud of what I managed... I gave at least 30 talks, and if I count how many people I reached last year it´s at least 15000 (the two TEDx talks helps quite a lot, of course). If I also think that I "reach" 30 pupils through every teacher I talk to, the number doubles (I gave several talks to teachers around Norway last year). Also, the blog had an average of 15000 hits per month - which I think is quite ok for a pink blog about nuclear physics and research and stuff ;)
This year I hope to do even better - I want to reach more people (through the blog, and through talks), I want to give better talks, and I want to inspire more people to go into science <3 

----------------------------------------------------------------

-January-


-February-


-March-


-April-


-May-


-June-


-July-


-August-


-September-


-October-


-November-


-December-




tirsdag 13. januar 2015

Heavier than heavy water

I think this will be a great week - at least it started good <3 
My Monday consisted of basically two things: reading papers (scientific ones - OMG they are tough to read; it takes seriously forever to get through just one), and a very fun, inspiring and secret meeting - really want to tell you all about it now, but I have to wait a little while (it´ll be fun, though) :/


torsdag 8. januar 2015

31



Yesterday was my 31st birthday, and during these 31 years I´ve "achieved" different things...I made a list of some of the first things that came to my mind:

I´ve been pregnant, I´ve given birth, and I had a daughter <3 
I´ve learned 2.5 languages, I´ve travelled to 5 continents, and I lived abroad - in Paris. I started university, and I earned a master´s degree. I have failed courses at the university. I have been in love (several times) and I´ve been heartbroken (once I was so shocked and devastated that my entire body stiffened - my neck, back and arms ached for more than a week). I´ve lived in 15 different places, and I have owned two of them - the 15th I bought all by myself. I´ve worked as a dance teacher, I´ve worked as a "normal" teacher, I´ve worked in a perfumery, I´ve been a consultant at the Norwegian radiation protection authority, and I´ve worked at a science library.
I´ve had dreams that were shattered, and I´ve had dreams that are still there. 
I´ve weighed 100 kilos. 
I have been depressed. 
I have danced on stage, I have sung on stage - I have danced AND sung on stage. 
I´ve published scientific papers, and I have talked at scientific conferences. I´ve been accused of cheating, and I´ve been accused of lying (when I had actually never been more open and honest in my entire life - guess I´ve learned that being honest and telling the truth doesn´t meen you have to tell everyone EVERYTHING)
I´ve been dumped by facebook chat (a little bit like the post it in Sex and the City: "sorry I can´t don´t hate me").
I have given two TEDx talks, I´ve written several opinion articles for Aftenposten, I´ve been inteviewed, I´ve been an "expert" on the radio, and I have been on TV. 
I have voted.   
I´ve talked to thousands of kids about science, and why it is awesome, and why they could choose science if they really want to change the world <3
I hope my year as 31 will be a good one - I must have learned something by now, or what?

had a small celebration - girls night - with Alexandra, my mother, my sister, and her daughter Andrea last night, and it was really nice :)








tirsdag 6. januar 2015

10 facts about heavy water

So yesterday I was interviewed by the newspaper Dagbladet about heavy water (since they´ve made this new show about the Norwegian heavy water and how they bombed the factory during world war 2 - love the show, btw :D ), and I was thinking It´s really long since I´ve had a "10 facts" blogpost, and I think this is the perfect occasion! I therefore give you 10 facts about heavy water <3 <3 <3

  1. Heavy water is heavy - around 10% heavier than light water (as a nuclear physicist working with reactors I actually call normal water for light water :V)
  2. Heavy water is chemically called D2O, instead of H2O (normal/light water)
  3. The D in D2O is for deuteron
  4. A deuteron is a heavy version of hydrogen (an isotope of hydrogen), and it´s heavier because it has a neutron in its nucleus in addition to the proton (normal hydrogen has only that one proton in its nucleus) - thus a deuteron is twice as heavy as a hydrogen
  5. Heavy water can be used as a moderator (something that slows down the speed neutrons) in a nuclear reactor (this is what the Germans wanted it for during WW2)
  6. If you use heavy water in a reactor you can run it on natural uranium - you don´t have to enrich the uranium (like the Americans were doing in the Manhattan project)
  7. Heavy water doesn´t "eat" neutrons, like light water does - which is why we love <3 it
  8. Germany wanted to make plutonium - and it´s a really good idea to do this in a reactor with heavy water and natural uranium
  9. Norway doesn´t produce heavy water anymore, but we use it in our two research reactors, in Kjeller and Halden :D
  10. India are researching reactors using heavy water and thorium - which is really cool!
------------------------------------------------

This is a picture of me, wearing a kimono, writing about heavy water in my living room:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...