On the 25^th August, CDT DST students and staff participated in the Science + Industry Museum ‘Platform for Investigation’ day. These special exhibits days which are held one Saturday a month, invite pioneering scientists studying cutting-edge research to showcase their work.

DST CDT and Aberystwyth University Physics Department at Green Man Festival

Diamonds at the Glasgow Science Festival - by Lukasz Dziechciarczyk

On 16 - 17th June a group of students from the University of Strathclyde participated in Glasgow Science Festival. Every year kids and adults gather around stands, made by young researchers to learn about a variety of topics. The DST team gave them the opportunity to build a huge diamond model made of rubber balls and sticks (representing carbon atoms and bonds) between them. Kids loved the idea of building something from scratch and left us with a complete diamond model many times. To our awe (or shame) some of them managed to finish the model much faster than we could ever have been able to. For older folks, we had pictures of colorful diamonds with explanations for the yellow, blue or pink colour.

It was exciting to convey the cutting edge research in a casual fashion and bring our research field closer to the public. Our stand was shared with friends from Strathclyde Student Community for Optics, Physics and Engineering (SCOPE) at the University of Strathclyde who were kind enough to join forces with their show about the fundamentals of science about lasers and polarization of light as encountered on a daily basis. Our hard work paid off with many grateful and smiley faces!

Diamonds in Space - British Science Week Fair 2018, Aberystwyth University

Kerry Hazeldine

As part of British Science Week 2018, Aberystwyth University hosted a 3-day event where students from across county Ceredigion from years 3 to 7 were invited to come along to see what exciting science and research is being conducted at the University and its partners.

Students of the CDT partnered up with students from Aberystwyth University to put on a ‘Diamonds in Space’ stand to highlight diamond research being conducted by the CDT, and diamond science and space science research being conducted in the Physics department at Aberystwyth.

Over the course of the three days’, children were taught about how diamonds are formed on earth in the mantle, how the environment in which they are formed relates to their crystal structure, how the carbon in diamond is different to carbon in other carbon allotropes, and how diamond can be formed in space. One of the interactive activities was to help build a large and growing structure of diamond using ball and stick models; with another activity being able to use the virtual reality headsets to have a look around the solar system and find areas and environments were diamonds could form, i.e. in the asteroid belt.

Over the entire week, approximately 1600 children and adults visited the fair with approximately 400 of those visiting our stall.

On Saturday 10^th March, Guy (DST CDT, Warwick) joined the Oxford CDT students for a reprise of our highly successful stall at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History Super Science Saturday. The theme of the day was ‘People and Planet’. The ‘people’ proved too much for our beloved magnetometer demo; and the ‘planet’ will hopefully benefit from an increased number of people enjoying and understanding science. People were impressed and surprised by the extreme properties of this crazy crystalline product of the planet. We are honoured to be involved in this series of events a second time, and we really appreciate the warmth shown towards us by the museum staff. Our reputation apparently preceded us, evident from the moment our stall was opened, and our popularity melted the competition.

Image courtesy of Oxford University Museum of Natural History.