About Me
School
I grew up in Cheshire (see
map).
Chester was my nearest town, where I
went to school (at The Queen's
School, Chester).
Explosions
In late 1990, while I was in the 6th form, I went to a 'physics for sixth
formers' weekend at Nottingham
University. The most memorable lecture of the weekend was entitled
Thunder and Lightning. This was composed of many explosions and some
luminescence, and was very exciting. The highlight was when the lecturer
shot a
candle through several pieces of plywood. I have told this to various
friends since, but no-one has believed me. That is, not until they
read the New
Scientist article which mentioned Colonel B. D. Shaw's lecture on
explosives. This is detailed in the
B.D.Shaw Centenary
Celebration web pages.
Young Enterprise
While I was in the sixth form I helped form a
Young Enterprise company.
We were called Revolution and made woven leather bracelets, earings
and marbled paper products (writing paper, wrapping paper, pencils etc.). As
production manager I was in charge of training the work force (first I had
to research how to make the products myself) & then in organising everyone
into making our products. It was all good fun & quite a learning experience.
I even took the exam. Although we didn't win the regional competition, we
did get a prize for the best presentation. All in all, it was definitely worth
doing.
Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Award
I had a busy time in the 6th form, as I also did the
The Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Award.
For this I improved my piano playing, orienteered all over the country, read
for the blind at the
RNIB Express Reading
Centre in Tarporley, went on an expedition in Snowdonia and spent a week
at Birmingham University on a Insight Into Engineering course. This is
purely for women and includes problem-solving activities and a visit to a local
company.
Year Out
After school, and before university, I took a year out to take part in the
The Year in Industry. This is a scheme
run by The Royal Academy of Engineering
as part of its
Engineering
Education Continuum.
The company I was placed with was EA
Technology, where I worked on their
Lightning
Flash Location System. I was trying to come up with a method to
predict
lightning from the data they recorded. I didn't manage it, but
EA Technology since has.
University
As an undergraduate at Merton, from
1993 to 1997, I studied
Physics and obtained a
2:1.
As part of the
4-year course
I had to study two areas of physics in greater depth. My two options were
Particle physics & the
Physics of
Atmospheres and Oceans. I also had to carry out a four week project. Mine
was on "Tides and influence on LEP energy".
My in-college tutor (and one of my tutors as an undergraduate) is Dr Bowler,
some of whose
sayings
have been colleceted by a third year physicist who was impressed by his
lecturing style.
One lecture in particular, of all those I've attended, stays in my mind. It
was given by Dr Tom Mullin in his Introductory Chaos lecture series in Trinity
of my 2nd year (31st May 1995 to be exact). The lecture
was about paramectric pendula and Floquet theory, and it is the demonstations,
not the maths, that I remember. These were done with jointed, rigid pendula (2
or even 3 sections), where each section could rotate independently. Dr Mullin
demonstrated that all the sections could be made to stand vertically upright,
iff the mount point was vibrated up and down at the correct frequency. This
definitely seemed like magic. What he did next was even more so. He introduced
his final demonstration, which he'd only recently discovered, as
The Indian Rope
Trick, and then made a flexible 'wire' (a bit of bicycle brake wire, I
think) stand vertically upright by vibrating it fast enough. He concluded by
saying that according to Matieu's equation it shouldn't happen. That summer he
and Dr David Acheson solved the maths - see their paper:
Acheson, D.J. & Mullin, T., "Upside-down pendulums", Nature, Vol. 366,
18 November 1993, pp215--216.
I am a member of the Institute of Physics,
and as such am intitled to put GradInstP after my name. I also get a
portable email address:
pauline.sinclair@physics.org
The Institute provide some very useful services and their
PhysicsWeb is a very valuable resource.
The Spectroscopy Group
organises some useful conferences.
Since coming to university, I have started giving blood. My blood is
particularly useful to the UK National
Blood Service because it is O rhesus negative, which means it can be
given to anyone. Everyone should
give blood; it could help to
save a life.
I am currently a graduate at Merton
College, where I am studying for a DPhil in
Atmospheric Physics. My topic of
research is investigating a new method of measuring
air pollution.
At the start of November I went on one of the
Research
Councils' Graduate Schools at
Otterburn
Hall in Northumberland. It was great fun but exhausting. I learnt a lot
about myself; my skills, my ability to work in a team, to communicate and
gained a lot of self confidence. I would recommend it to any other
2nd or 3rd year graduates.
Pauline's Homepage