Lots of mathematics… - Tuesday 07-02-2017

Today I needed to get out of bed a little earlier, because I needed to be at Imperial about a quarter to 9 to start of my day with a mechanics lecture. The lecture was very interesting; nevertheless it was a bit difficult to follow at some points because of the high level of mathematics that was used throughout. The lecture started relatively easy about momentum and the laws of kinetic energy. Gradually it became more complex and we looked into a pendula system in which inelastic collisions play an important role. The last part consisted of calculations and formulas of pages and pages long… this is where I lost the lecturer and something about the reactions given by the students, made me think I wasn’t the only one, which is at least something. After the lecture I got a lab induction together with Karla and Maryam. We learned (or at least tried) how to use the fluorometer and a few other machines that we will use for the experiment. We also got an instruction about the safety-protocol in the lab and access was granted to our key cards so we would be able to enter (the lab is located in the highly restricted zone, so you need special access). When we got back into professor Tweedy’s office, the other students of the group were already waiting. It is a group consisting of PhD-students doing research in similar directions and therefore having the same (primary/secondary) supervisor. They all briefly explained their projects to me and discussed to progress they had booked in the last week. After this meeting I started working on my own project. The project is about iridotomy and the possible diffusion of proteins through the hole from the anterior chamber to the posterior chamber. I read some more information about different theories on the subject and about the eye itself. I also needed a lot of mathematics again, as I needed to calculate the Reynolds and Péclet number as I would need those in my experiment later. On top of that, as if I hadn’t seen enough equations for the day, I attended a mathematics lecture at 2pm. The beginning was really difficult as they continued from the point they had left of in the previous lectures, which I had obviously not attended. After a while they started a new topic, however, and it got easier to follow. Nevertheless it was still quite difficult and it became clear that there is indeed quite some difference between vwo-5 maths and Imperial college math... (-; After this lecture I had a short break, which I used to get lost searching for a suitable place to eat. Once I had found my way back to the bioengineering department I did some more preparational work for my project. Around five we went to the lab again, to collect all the equipment we would need for the first part of the experiment tomorrow. We found out that a specific part of the equipment was not available, so we had to use something else. This did, however, mean that I had to do large parts of the calculation again. Around half past 6 we were done for the day. In the evening I redid the equations and now I’m done with equations for a while! Tomorrow I will have lab work the entire day, so that will probably be very interesting and fun!