In February our latest work experience student, Mackenzie, from William Farr near Lincoln joined us for a week of work experience. It was a pleasure to host Mackenzie for a few days. Here’s what he had to say about his week:

“After having arrived at Lincoln Uni, I was greeted by Matthew Booth, with whom I had organised my work experience. He then showed me to the physics department and helped organise my schedule for the rest of the week based off my interests, giving me as many options/opportunities as possible. We then toured the INB which helped massively in getting my bearings, after which he introduced me to some of his colleagues who seemed more than happy to accommodate me in any applicable activities. Throughout my time at the Uni, I had the opportunity to attend several lectures, including an astrophysics lecture by Phil Sutton; a condensed matter physics lecture by Matthew Booth; and a thermodynamics lecture by Manuela Mura, all of which were immensely interesting and informative. I was also tasked with analysing some of the data from the Uni’s radio telescope, which I was more than happy to do despite the fact I had forgotten nearly everything I’d learned about excel in IT lessons at school. I also had the opportunity to attend a 2^nd year lab, in which I helped check how easily the new scripts could be followed by 1^st years. As a part of this, I was able to set up and perform the experiments myself just as I would have if I’d been a 1^st year myself. During my work experience, I was also invited to attend a meeting of a group of students and professors where they discussed General Relativity and other physicists around the subject which was of great interest to me. Finally, I had the opportunity to sit in on a session where they were using an electron microscope to image different objects and discussed how they work, and I must say the images were rather impressive. Overall, I can’t think of many ways in which this experience could have been made better considering the excellent staff and opportunities they had allowed me to partake in.”