Foredrag: Thorium Mythbusters

God midtuke alle! Her kommer et lite foredragstips fra meg ;)

Jeg skal nemlig holde tre foredrag fremover - eller, det vil si; jeg skal holde ett foredrag - Thorium Mythbusters - tre ganger i tiden fremover. Dette kan jo kanskje være interessant for noen av de fineste leserne mine, og siden det er åpent for alle så må jeg jo nesten si i fra ;)

Det første foredraget er allerede nå til lørdag, ifbm. NFK (Norske Fysikkstudenters Konferanse), klokken 12:30 i Store Fysiske Auditorium på Fysisk institutt på Blindern.

De to andre er torsdag 9. april på Real Frokost (kl 08:30) på Realistforeningen, og det siste er tirsdag den 12. mai er på arrangementet Frokost hos Kristine (jeg kan selvsagt komme med mer info om de to andre foredragene når det nærmer seg, hvis det er ønskelig?)

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Det jeg skal snakke om blir omtrent som dette <3

Thorium er et naturlig forekommende, lett radioaktivt materiale, som av mange har blitt sett på som redningen for kjernekraftens rykte, og løsningen på klimakrisen.

Å bruke thorium som brensel i kjernekraftverk kan ha flere fordeler, og det som ofte trekkes frem er bla:

• det fins fire ganger mer thorium enn uran i naturen 
• man kan produsere mindre radioaktivt avfall
• sannsynligheten for en reaktor som "løper løpsk" er null
• man kan gjenvinne avfallet fra thorium-brensel
• thorium kan ikke brukes til våpenproduksjon

Men stemmer det virkelig at thorium er 200 ganger mer energitett enn uran? Og er thorium-ktaftverk tryggere enn konvensjonelle kjernekraftverk? Går thorium-tilhengerne for langt, og er kanskje thorium blitt vår tids teknologiske kult?

Foredraget tar for seg myter og misforståelser rundt kjernekraft generelt, og throium spesielt.

This week: Big Bang on Monday (and such) :D

It´s Monday, and I´m back in Oslo again, at my office, and ready for a new week (drinking my first cup of coffee as we "speek")! 

As always on Mondays I share my PhD week plan: It doesn´t look like there´s much going on the first two days this week, but that´s not entirely true; since they´re filled with filming of the first Big Bang shows *excited*.  Then there´s very little time for scientific work, but I´ll do more of that when I get to the other half of this week. 

As you can see I´ll be giving a talk about Thorium Mythbusters on Saturday, here at the Institute - will tell you more about this tomorrow (it will be open for eveyone ;) ).

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Last week went pretty good, and I almost managed to tick of everything on my PhD week plan - except I still haven´t sent a layout for the "bridge chapter" of my thesis to Sunniva. Things took longer than expected (as they always do), and Jon and I spent more time on the introduction chapter than we did on the bridge... Anyway, I should just work on it for maybe an hour, and then it should be possible to and something to Sunniva - hopefully today <3

Main goal this week: keep calm, don´t stress, and make a new, and detailed, PhD plan (and send this to Sunniva on Friday).

@sunnivarose

Happy Friday, and bon week-end, everyone!

It´s been a while since my last Instagram blog post, and I thought that was a nice way to "end" this week (I´ll be at the lab tomorrow too, discussing with Jon and working on my thesis, so my week isn´t exactly over yet ;) ) - hope you enjoy some snaps from my everyday life:

 - instamoments @sunnivarose -

could finally tell you that I´ll be at "Big Bang" on NRK // playing with superconductors

at NRK, getting my make up done // <3 Alexandra <3

 

 in the elevator with liquid nitrogen (which is a real NO NO - I found out after posting this picture...) // happy, little girl

BEAUTIFUL, pink <3 sunset in Oslo (and guess who has the nicest view ;) ) // little sister and Magnus (her fantastic boyfriend) celebrating little sister´s 25th birthday

#jenterogteknologi - talking to all these great girls about science and stuff <3 // a cold, winter day

7th of March I´ll be giving a talk at Norske Fysikkstudenters Konferanse in Oslo // party at Alexandra´s

I´m really really happy now, btw, and it has to do with my job situation (as a PhD student) - will tell you all about it when I know all the details... Again: happy Friday, and happy week-end - we´ll soon leave the lab for a couple of beers at Le Gichet (love the Bière Blanche) :)

Happy neutron anniversary!

Today it´s 83 years since Chadwick´s paper in Nature: Possible Existence of a Neutron, where he predicted that there had to be a neutral particle (neutron <3<3<3) in the atomic nucleus, in addition to the proton.

"Up to the present, all the evidence is in favour of the neutron, while the quantum hypothesis can only be upheld if the conservation of energy and momentum be relinquished at some point."

He was right, of course, and in May the same year he had another paper in Nature - The Existence of a Neutron - and he got the nobel prize in physics in 1935 for the discovery of the neutron. 

You can read the entire thing (which is only one page) HERE :)

Coffee and (DARK!) chokolate

Good morning!

I forgot it takes forever to get from Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, to the lab in Orsay, south of Paris... Normally I prefer to fly Norwegian to the Orly airport, which is just between the city and the lab, but this time Air France was the only company with reasonable flight times. Anyway, by the time I finally arrived at the lab, I was starving, and had to get something to eat. Then there was catching up to do, and suddenly it was 10:30 PM and I had to go to sleep because I had signed up for the morning/day shift today. I´ve been at the lab since 7 AM, and heavy doses of chocolate and coffee are needed ;)

(Didn´t have time to put on my make up this morning btw., so I look a little...hmmm...don´t really know...:P )

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So I told you yesterday that I was embarrassed, and that I would tell you about it - was planning on doing it last night, but now you know how come that didn´t happen. I will tell you now instead:

Last Friday I was on the radio, and one of the things I was talking about was the amount of radioactivity that was present at earth 3.5 billion years ago (when life started). So I was talking about the half-lives of thorium-232, uranium-238 and uranium-235. 

Thorium-232 has a half-life of 14 billion years, so the amount of thorium here on earth is more or less the same as it was 3.5 billion years ago. The half-life of uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, so around half of what was here 3.5 years ago is gone.

So far, so good...

But then I talked about uranium-235, which has a half-life of "only" 700 million years. This means that 3.5 billion years is more or less the same as 5 half-lives of uranium-235. Then I did the mistake: I said that since 5 half-lives of this uranium isotope has gone by, there is one fifth of it left - in other words, 3.5 billion years ago there was 5 times as much uranium-235 on earth, as it is today.

WRONG! 5 half-lives doesn´t meen that there was five times more :/ *feeling stupid*

1 half-life of something means that after that time half of it is gone. Two half-lives means that 3 quarters is gone, three half-lives means 7/8 is gone, four half-lives means 15/16 is gone, and five half-lives means 31/32 is gone - 1/32 is left. 1/32 is around the same as 3%, and 3.5 billion years ago there was 32 times more uranium-235 on earth...!

My excuse is that I was really stressed the day before, and something did NOT feel right (e.g. I didn´t get the right percentage of uranium-235 to have fission and a chain reaction going on in nature - and now I know why :P ); but this was a "rookie mistake" - and I shouldn´t have done it :(

Hope you can forgive me <3 <3 <3

Tomorrow is an important nuclear anniversary - anyone that can guess what it is? I will tell you tomorrow :)

Testing outfits

Hi everyone! I´m at the airport right now - on my way to Paris (not really - I´m on my way to Orsay, which is outside of Paris :P) and the fission experiment. Excited, and will tell you more about it when I get there, and know more about it myself.

This morning started at NRK, where I tested outfits for Big Bang... We start on Monday (O. M. G.), and I must admit; the next days will be very hectic. It helps to be "stuck" at a lab, though - I will hopefully (very likely) have some time when I´m not baby sitting the experiment or working on the "bridge" chapter, to prepare for Monday.

See you later! I have a confession (hint: I´m embarrassed), and I will tell you about it tonight...

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snaps from yesterday - getting ready for my lecture about SoMe at HiOA

Just LOVE the scarf - that I got as a gift from Sunniva (supervisor) after I finished my Master´s degree. Real, Russian, wool scarf <3

Breathe

New week, new possibilities, new plan.

But first; an important nuclear jubileum today. One of my favourite elements was discovered - or, chemically identified - on this day, 74 years ago :D Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Joseph W. Kennedy, and Arthur Wahl bombarded uranium with deuterons and identified PLUTONIUM (element number 94).

Plutonium is of course known for being used in nuclear weapons and reactors, but it´s also used in artificial pacemakers for hearts, and to power units in space probes <3

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This week is about an exciting fission experiment at the lab in Orsay, outside of Paris, and what I call the "bridge chapter" in my thesis - I have to make a "bridge" between basic nuclear experiments and full core reactor simulations. This is what I see as the most challenging part of my thesis so far (and that´s probably the reson why I´ve been postponing to write for a very long time).
I think it´ll bee a good week, but the next 24 hours are critical ones (a little bit too much to do in too little time)...