User:Tristan Miller/Honours physics
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October the Thirtieth, 2006 AD
Well it is now the final week of the project, and I am furiously attempting to write my thesis. This is made difficult by a sudden interest in all things procrastinatorial - including, amongst others, the resurrection of a Mac SE and the subsequent game-playing (Tetris, Dark Castle et. al.). There has also been this matter of the Astrophysics assignment, which, like all ambiguous and confusing assignments (something this degree is now famous for) has taken me a lot of time and effort to complete. It hasn't helped at all that the Daylight Savings has stolen an hour from my life when I need it the most...
I am doing my thesis in LaTeX, all by myself unlike some of my contemporaries...actually I am now using LyX, which is much easier than hand-coding all of the markup. Until it garbles the code somehow, in some mysterious way which requires you to go into LaTeX and delete most of the formatting options LyX has put in. Anyway, I'm looking forward to auto-bibliography, auto-TOC, auto-formula numbering and so on, not to mention having a thesis that looks fairly nice.
THEN - beyond the thesis there are the exams. The first is on the 7th of November, but it is only Fluid Mechanics, a rather straightforward subject with lots of revision material. The final one is the equally straightforward Mathematic Albiology on the 14th. Wedged in between is the Astrophysics exam, a subject that obeys the following relationships:
where
Nln = number of pages of lecture slides for the subject
NL = number of lecturers for the subject
Awtf = index of student confusion
Iboob = the average administrative competence factor of the lecturers
X = the total confusion and rage caused by watching Mulholland Drive
In this case
NL = 5, with Iboob = log5(2356.70X) (determined empirically). Thus the index of student confusion is more than 2000 MHD, with over 500 lecture slides. This causes serious quality of life issues to manifest amongst the student body. Assignments are written by an anonymous, perhaps random lecturer and we still don't know much about the exam (except that it is worth maybe 80% of the grade) - the format is unknown, with speculation about whether or not it is an open-notes exam. Even so, the 500+ pages of notes are a bit too hefty to be lugging about to exams. Anyhow, this course reeks of disorganisation, and it is likely that everybody will end up doing pretty badly as a result. Exam is on the 10th of November.
Anyhow, I've got a textbook to photocopy.
Tristan Miller 15:13, 29 October 2006 (PST)
EDIT: Astrophysics exam is now on the 15th of November. Huzzah.
Tristan Miller 15:18, 29 October 2006 (PST)
October the Fifth, 2006 AD
Uh yes a while since my last dateup. Many things have transpired, unfortunately not a great deal of them project related...I have actually made progress, luckily.
Tomorrow is my arbitrarily defined last experiment day...it will be my final trip to Buckland Park (involving photo-touring and equipment retrieval), some of my last adventures on the roof of the Oliphant Wing (I'll see if the Moon is reflective enough to detect with the small dish), bandwidth and integration time testing of the 10GHz receiver, some other junk...
Yes, it's all coming together - I begin the serious thesis writing on Monday next week, hopefully producing a couple of drafts and a finished work a week before it is due (on November the 3rd). In the meantime there is still the coursework, leading up to exams, plus the usual chaos of life to contend with. I think it is more or less under control now though. Writing is not something that I'm scared of doing, and the first 20 of 40 pages is likely to consist solely of background theory which I can borrow and paraphrase from some of my favourite textbooks.
Speaking of which, the cream of the crop here is Radio Astronomy by J.D Kraus...an excellent book by any standards. The edition in question is the 1966 edition, and while some of the astronomical information is a bit dated, the conceptual development is straightforward and well backed up with examples. Besides it is an interesting read, even more so when returning to the book after struggling with the many concepts involved in experiments. Between Radio Astronomy and Antennas (another of Kraus'), just about all aspects of radio astronomy and related engineering are covered in great detail.
Anyway, just so you know, I didn't get around to building the 3m dish...I guess this will end up being an Honours project for someone else, or perhaps part of a PhD project. I don't think I really want to do a PhD right away though, but you never know...
July the Twenty-Seventh, 2006 AD
In the last week I have learnt an incredible amount about radio receivers, although it has been an uphill battle against equipment failure and total confusion. The general idea about the whole thing that I have now has been hard won, anyhow. My current challenge is to determine the amount of noise inherent in the receiver system - this will determine the strength of the signals I can detect with the dish. The desired signals will often be very faint and have to be detected above the random thermal/electrical activity of the system, thus a measure of the receiver's noise will give me an idea of what I can expect to be able to see with the 3m dish. The procedure for determining this noise level is fairly straightforward, or so it seemed at first. A textbook chapter and several technical articles later, I finally understand what it is I need to do!
Basically the method involves putting known levels of electrical noise into the input of the receiver. Noise generators are available that can do this, although the University does not have any that will produce noise over the required frequency range (1420MHz +/- 20kHz). An alternative was suggested by Murray Hamilton - FM modulate a 1420MHz signal from a signal generator with a low-frequency noise generator. By then increasing the signal frequency to lie just outside the receiver's bandwidth, and setting the FM deviation to 20kHz, it would be possible to derive similar results. Unfortunately the low-frequency noise generator seemed to be quite malfunctional. Oh well. At least I understand how FM works now! Now I just have to determine another way to measure the noise level of the receiver, and finally put the tens of thousand s of dollars worth of scientific equipment I have at my disposal to good use.
My results from last semester's cluster of exams came in a while ago. A's for Electronics and Experimental Methods (mostly about Fourier analysis), B's for Nuclear & Radiation Physics and Atmospheric Physics. Apparently an A is the same as Distinction and above, B is equivalent to a Credit. The specific marks have not been posted - apparently this allows the Department some freedom to give a student whatever final mark for Honours they see fit. At any rate, it will be possible to get first-class Honours with these grades, provided I do a bang-up job with this semester's subjects and of course the thesis.
Speaking of the coursework this semester, I have taken four subjects rather than the mandatory three - at the end I will be able to select my seven best out of the year's eight...perhaps converting one of those B's into an A. Or not - if the workload ends up being too much I can happily drop a subject without consequence. Anyhow, the selection of subjects this time is Honours Electrodynamics, Advanced Astrophysics, Fluid Mechanics and Mathematical Biology. The 'noteworthy' features of these subjects are as follows:
- Electrodynamics has OVER 160 PAGES! of lecture notes
- Astrophysics has five or so different lecturers, all senior members of the research group I belong to
- Fluid Mechanics is a relaxing, easygoing look at hydrodynamics, involving familiar mathematics and concepts
- Mathematical Biology is revealing interesting things about population growth
Honours is hard work, the least of which is walking up and down stairs all day long. I look forward to the day when I can sit back and look at the shiny new degree on my wall. I may even make a point of highlighting its existence to others, possibly with some classy LED chaser lights.
May the Fifteenth, 2006 AD
The Honours grind continues. Assignment after assignment swarm in through every open window of time. That's correct, there is continuous coursework throughout this degree, it makes up the 50% of the final mark not taken up by the thesis...
Meanwhile, the project has stalled at the beginning of its second, terrifying phase. I mentioned before the possibility of constructing a larger, more important radio dish. Well now I am about to do this. The dish will be 3.5m in diameter once I bolt its pieces together...and the radio receiver equipment (gained by the University as part of the SETI program) must be thoroughly tested by me until I'm sure how it works. The main reason for moving to this dish and a different frequency (1420MHz) is that winter is setting in, and the dish I have can barely see through the clouds. To this 'new' equipment, the entire atmosphere is almost completely transparent.
The Buckland Park field station where I have been taking my readings lately is a desolate, windswept and asbestos-riddled locale. I have retrieved several items of antiquity from this place, including a 1988 school calendar advertising the fight against measles. I've also recovered several vacuum tubes. The kilometres of old coaxial cable may also be worth taking...
It has been suggested to me recently that I think about doing a PhD in Medical Physics next year. This sounds kind of interesting - I had pretty much ruled out an astrophysics PhD due to vivid visions of me being bored to death before I could finish it. Medical physics combines biology, human anatomy and tonnes of radiation, so it has to be fascinating. The other options are to do a teaching diploma next year, or spend at least a year 'fucking about' and teaching myself a whole bunch of useful skills, like marksmanship and programming. This would also allow me to get one of those 360's and play games like Spore and Halo 3 until I die from starvation.
Tristan Miller 21:46, 15 May 2006 (PDT)
February the Second, 2006 AD
That's right, I'm doing an Honours project.
After about one week I'm totally overwhelmed by the new information. This is even before coursework starts. That said, I have my own desk in my office, a room that I share with two other honours students (they also have their own desks). Mine is in a classical brooding position: a huge desk facing away from the door.
Anyhow, what I'm doing with this project is essentially learning radio astronomy from base principles. I have at my disposal a few pieces of equipment with which to measure the Universe...not very good instruments for that purpose mind you! There's a 35cm radio dish that I'm using at the moment to study the Sun and to get a noise survey of the area, as well as a scanning radio that I'm trying to negotiate with. Later on I will be taking some of this equipment to Buckland Park to see if I can spot such galactic radio sources as Sgr A (at the centre of the Milky Way), and Cen A (an active 'radio galaxy', also known as NGC 5128). If successful, I will probably end up assembling a much larger dish at Buckland Park and using it to make more detailed observations. This telescope may form the beginnings of a home-grown radio telescopy group.
So for the time being, I'm walking around on rooftops mucking around with radio equipment, and generally pouring hours of time into mistake-making and hopefully learning a thing or two about radio astronomy. The amusing thing is that I come home and microwave my dinner using the same flavour of photons I'm trying to detect with my dish.
Tristan Miller 04:06, 2 February 2006 (PST)
