September 2008 Archives

MyIOP has finally launched - you can check it out here: http://my.iop.org

To login you just need your membership login details, and this should take you to the MyIOP main page. From here you can interact with other Institute members, create any network of your choice, upload your own files - whether it be audio, video or text. It's the perfect way to find out what other members are doing, not only in the UK but around the world too.

On the first day more than 2,500 members logged in and updated their profile information - so if you haven't done that yet, make sure you do!

We've also created a number of short videos to show you have to use it. You can find these here: www.iop.org/Membership/tutorials/index.html

Remember though - it's your network- you decide how the network develops. If you've got any comments or suggestions just go to the Forums section of MyIOP and leave a comment.

We're delighted to have Brian Masara from the South African Institute of Physics visiting IOP this week.  Brian is the SAIP's first executive, and is doing a bit of research into how IOP works, to help him plan how he wants to develop SAIP.  It's really interesting to talk to someone with a different perspective on physics and institute-type issues.  We all envy Brian the chance to build up something valuable from scratch, though we know he is going to have to face a lot of challenges on the way.

I was supposed to liveblogging this from the Science and Technology Facilities Council's "Big Bang Breakfast" event, but we had a bit of a technical failure. (Mildly ironic given that CERN famously invented the web.)

Luckily, CERN had no such problems.

The proton beams were oscillating too much at first, but were quickly brought under control as the tests went through more and more of the Large Hadron Collider's sections and finally right round the whole ring.

The LHCb detector first picked up some particle tracks around 9.30am UK time. This is what the first collisions detected in by the ATLAS (left) and CMS looked like:

 

 

 

Before these results came in, John Denham, the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, reiterated the need for fundamental research such as this. He emphasised his point with a story of the first approval of UK involvement in expensive particle physics research, under Margaret Thatcher. Expecting her to be opposed to the idea, her ministers had carefully rehearsed arguments against involvement in a big, publicly funded, European project with little in the way of expected benefits. She allegedly replied: "Yes, but it is interesting."

 

 I'm sure the pupils from Langton Grammar School would agree with Mrs Thatcher. They were lucky enough to have previously visited CERN, and made an appearance at the STFC's switch-on event to share their new-found enthusiasm -- one girl has even decided to study physics at University rather than business as planned. It's certainly a refreshing antidote to the widespread comments on newspaper websites from somewhat hysterical Key Stage 3 and 4 kids panicking about the end of world -- partly attributable, I would imagine, to a lack of specialist physics teachers.

 

 

September's issue of Interactions has arrived and been distributed around the building.

Next up is the new newsletters for Council, staff and partner international physical societies.

We're hoping this will eventually also include an email newsletter sent out to all 35 000 members around the middle of each month -- in-between issues of Interactions -- to help keep everyone even more informed on all of the Institute's work in promoting physics.