On tour

As this is my last week, there were a few things that needed to be done. On monday, another student and I went to the other part of the university to collect my certificate (they've really excelled themselves here, its a lovely one in a nice red covered folder with golden lettering, nice!), and bought my train ticket to Hunan for next week on the way.


In the afternoon, our professor took us to see the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, not far away but there was heavy traffic so it took about an hour to drive each way! They have some fairly advanced kit there and do lots of experiments - some of the students from the university go there to do various things to their samples.


This is our professor admiring a poster of the Pelletron that they have there. It was imported from the states in the 80's but is still very useful. The big round bit was as big as a room, and generates a very high energy ion beam.This can be sent down any of the five tubes and used as a very powerful microscope. It is currently being used a lot by environmental scientists trying to clean up Shanghai's air pollution.

The things that are really standing out to me from the summer are the difference in the amount of experimental work we do at Cambridge and here at Shanghai. I've done 4 years and got a masters already, but the only serious experimental work (besides a few assessed practicals in the first few years) we do is our 4th year project - and even then, mine was computational so not a clamp stand in sight! By contrast, in Shanghai a masters takes 6 years (although they have to study a fair amount of compulsary English and 'Politics' as well during that time), the last two of which are purely practical, doing experiments and publishing papers. Some of the 4th year projects at Cam might have lead to papers, but on the whole we don't start publishing until PhD level. I'm quite looking forward to actually doing some experimental stuff after my time here!


This is an electron microscope they had. The two darker bits on the left were actually made in England - they were imported from one of the more mediocre universities there that shares it's hometown with Oxford Brookes.