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That was the Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass that was

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on March 25, 2021 by telescoper

I’m a bit late getting round to writing something on the blog today because it has been yet another hectic day. Between my usual lecture this morning and Computational Physics Laboratory session this afternoon we also had our long-awaited Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass (held via Zoom).

This event had been delayed twice because of Covid-19 so we were glad that it went ahead today at last!

We were a little nervous about how well it would go but as it happened I think it was a success. We had approaching a hundred schools tuning in, from Wicklow to Tralee, Longford to Monaghan, Donegal to Cork and many places between. The level of engagement was excellent. We held a question-and-answer session but were a little nervous in advance about whether we would actually get any questions. As it turned out we got a lot of questions with some very good ones among them. Reaction from students and teachers was very good.

For those who couldn’t make it to this morning’s session we did record the presentations and I’ll make the video available via YouTube in due course.

Now, I’ve been Zooming and Teaming (with a bit of Panopto thrown in) all day so if you don’t mind I’ll now go and vegetate.

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A Year of Closure

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth, Mental Health with tags , on March 12, 2021 by telescoper

Today is 12th March 2021, which means it is exactly one year since Maynooth University campus closed because of Covid-19. Last year 12th March was on a Thursday and I remember doing my Computational Physics lecture in the morning and a computer lab in the afternoon and then hearing we couldn’t go back to teaching the following day. After that, as it is this year, it was the Study Week break (which includes the St Patrick’s Day holiday). Last year we all trued to use the opportunity to move all our teaching online.

I certainly didn’t imagine that a full year later we would still be working from home. Although the current lockdown isn’t as strict as that of last Spring we’re still told not to come on campus unless it is strictly necessary, and all teaching remains online.

When the campus closed last year I was living in a small flat with no internet connection, so the only way I could do my teaching was using my mobile phone data. It wasn’t great but I did the best I could.

At least I was able to use the semi-unlocking of the lockdown in late summer to complete the purchase of a house. I’ve been much more comfortable doing teaching from here for the last six months or so, although not leaving the house except to do shopping has led to an extreme sense of isolation which is not all ameliorated by endless online meetings via Zoom and Teams. That, together with the heavy workload, is all very wearying. It further annoys me how many people think “working from home” means not “working very much” or not “working at all”. What it does mean is never getting away from your work, except when you’re asleep.

I’ve noticed over the last few months that the agoraphobia from which I’ve suffered sporadically over the years has very definitely returned. Agoraphobia can be defined as:

…an anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives their environment to be unsafe with no easy way to escape. These situations can include open spaces, public transit, shopping centers, or simply being outside their home.

My long-term agoraphobia has been about the threat of physical violence caused by a traumatic event in the past, but now it is more general. I see too many people not taking proper precautions (face masks, social distancing, etc) that it gets me very anxious for a new reason. Supermarkets are bad enough, but it’s more general. I’m now starting to realize that I’m going to find it difficult ever to return to a “normal” life of crowded lecture theatres and campus buildings after this pandemic ends, whenever that happens.

This morning I did a tutorial (via Teams) which was my last teaching session before the mid-term break. I was exhausted even before term started so it has been a very difficult six weeks. It’s not just the teaching, it’s also the relentless stream of demands from upstairs for other things to be done. There seems very little understanding from that direction of what life is like on the front line, to be honest.

My appointment as Head of Department for Theoretical Physics was nominally three years. I am now about halfway through that term and can’t wait for it to end.

Unfortunately there isn’t much light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. Case numbers in Ireland remain high, and are falling slowly at best; they have actually been increasing for the last few days. Vaccination rollout is also very slow, thanks to supply issues (chiefly with AstraZeneca).

I am now fairly confident that teaching at least for the Autumn Semester of 2021/22 will again be online, as there is little chance of staff being vaccinated by the end of the summer. I know colleagues in other Irish universities who are planning for this eventuality too.

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Fears for STEM at Maynooth

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , on March 11, 2021 by telescoper

On Monday I reported that Maynooth has selected a new President in the form of Professor Eeva Leinonen who is currently Vice Chancellor at Murdoch University in Australia. I was initially pleased to see the announcement, but news is coming out now that is filling me and my colleagues in STEM subjects with a sense of alarm.

According to this article Professor Eeva Leinonen effectively shut down all STEM subjects as separate disciplines at Murdoch University, removing the status of researchers from staff in these areas (i.e. putting them all on teaching-only positions) and turning all their teaching into support activities for other disciplines. As a consequence of this Murdoch University no longer awards degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. For further information see here.

Since this news has come out I have been filled with dread that the new President will do the same here in Maynooth where the Faculty of Science & Engineering is already smaller than those of Arts and Social Sciences.

The incoming President does not take up her role until October 1st but in the meantime I hope she will clarify what her intentions are so that the perception of her being anti-science does not cast a shadow over recruitment of students and staff here.

I therefore call upon Professor Eeva Leinonen to make a public statement on her plans for STEM subjects at Maynooth.

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Postgraduate Programmes in Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on March 2, 2021 by telescoper

We have a (virtual) Postgraduate Open Day coming up on Tuesday 9th March at Maynooth University (for which you can register here). To go with that here is a short video of our new Postgraduate Coordinator Dr John Regan answering some frequently asked questions about the programmes we offer in the Department of Theoretical Physics:

If you have any other questions then you can register for the Open Day where we will have staff on hand to answer them in a live Q&A session.

You could also follow the Department’s Twitter feed here:

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Particle Physics Masterclass at Maynooth

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on February 26, 2021 by telescoper

I have already informed you of a Masterclass in Astrophysics & Cosmology at Maynooth that will take place on March 25th 2021. For more information on that event including instructions on how to book see here.

Now it’s time to announce the International Masterclass on Particle Physics. The  Department of Theoretical Physics has hosted such event for secondary school students each Spring, apart from last year when it was cancelled because of Covid-19.  The next event will take place online on 21 and 22 March 2021. You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here.

These Masterclasses give secondary school students the opportunity to discover the world of quarks and leptons for themselves, by performing measurements on real data from CERN, meeting active particle physics researchers and linking up with like-minded students from other countries.  We will join thousands of other secondary school students at more than 100 universities and laboratories around Europe and worldwide in a programme stretching over four weeks.

Physics at the most fundamental level – the smallest and most basic building blocks of matter – is an exotic world.  But a few introductory talks and working with data from CERN will give the students insight into the fundamental particles of matter and the forces between them, as well as what went on during the Big Bang.

On Sunday afternoon, the students are introduced to particle physics, experiments and detectors in lectures given by active particle physics researchers.  On Monday, after a virtual visit to the ALICE detector at CERN, they work on their own with data from ALICE Afterwards they participate in a video conference with students from other countries and moderators at CERN, where they discuss and compare their results.

For more information on the Particle Physics Masterclasses, see the International Masterclasses web site.

I don’t know. You wait ages for a Masterclass in Physics at Maynooth University, and then along come two in quick succession!

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Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on February 23, 2021 by telescoper

Regular readers of the blog – both of them – may remember that we planned to present a Masterclass in Astrophysics & Cosmology on January 14th 2021 but this had to be postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions. After today’s announcements by the Government of  a phased return to school starting on March 1st we have now decided to proceed with a new date of March 25th 2021.

This will be a half-day virtual event via Zoom. It’s meant for school students in their 5th or 6th year of the Irish system, who should be returning to classrooms on March 15th, but there might be a few of them or their teachers who see this blog so I thought I’d share the news here. You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here.

Here is the updated official poster and the programme:

I’ll be talking about cosmology early on, while John Regan will talk about black holes. After the coffee break one of our PhD students will talk about why they wanted to study astrophysics. Then I’ll say something about our degree programmes for those students who might be interested in studying astrophysics and/or cosmology as part of a science course. We’ll finish with questions either about the science or the study!

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Irish Bingo Lingo

Posted in Education, Irish Language with tags , on February 20, 2021 by telescoper

This week I had my third lunchtime Irish language class during which, among a few other things, we learned about numbers (just 1-10 so far). After some practice in pronunciation, we then had some practice in comprehension by playing Bingo in Irish. Out of interest I’ve put up the Irish numbers along with their counterparts in Welsh for reasons which will become clear:

The first thing to note is the presence of the particle “a” in front of the number in Irish. This is a consequence of something I didn’t know about before taking this course. In Irish there are different ways of using numbers depending on whether you’re using them just as numbers (in which case you put the “a” in front) or if you’re using them to denote a quantity of things or people (in which cases you don’t put the “a” in front but have to use a particular grammatical construction involving the thing being counted). Numbers in Irish are not used simply as adjectives, as in for example English. That’s not how it works in any other language I know. So far we haven’t been taught about these other counting systems so I can’t say any more.

The second thing concerns the similarity of these numbers to those in many other European languages, which is not surprising since they share an Indo-European origin. Integers are such basic things that they are embedded at a very deep level in languages. The Irish numbers resemble those in French particularly strongly. This may be a consequence of modern Irish being influenced by Norman French or may just be evidence of the common root.

Notice the comparison with Welsh, however, which gives very clear evidence of the ancient mutation that led to the distinct language branches of p-Celtic and q-Celtic. Look at the number 4. In Irish, this is a ceathair (which is pronounced “a ka-hir”; the t is weakened by the following h) which resembles the French quatre. There is no q in the standard Irish alphabet but the sound is similar. In Welsh we have pedwar which, apart from the initial letter being a “p”, is structurally similar to the Irish version. A similar change in initial consonant happens with the number five.

Anyway I’m enjoying learning Irish. It’s a very interesting challenge. In the rest of the class we learned how to answer questions like What is your name (Cad is ainm duit?) followed by an exercise in giving names to celebrities shown in photographs. I firmly established my status as the Old Fogey of the class in this part, by being unable to identify a person called Shakira who, I’m told, is a popular vocal artiste of some sort.

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The Return to Schools in Ireland – The Facts

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Politics on February 20, 2021 by telescoper

There is some confusion going around about precisely when schools will reopen in the Republic of Ireland. In order to provide a service to the community I therefore thought I would summarize the main points here as clearly, concisely and coherently as possible.

At Primary schools, Junior infants or perhaps Junior and Senior infants and perhaps also including First and Second Class will return either separately or together on either 1st March or possibly 8th March. All other pupils will definitely return on 15th March or possibly a week or two weeks later but definitely by three weeks later than that unless there’s a change of plan.

At Secondary schools, the Junior Cycle will continue as normal apart from not actually happening: the Junior Certificate will be replaced by a voucher to spend on computer games. The Senior Cycle will return at the same time as Primary Schools, or at some different time depending on the circumstances, or perhaps just for the day before the Leaving Certificate examinations. Pupils will be able to choose either to take the examination or to receive a grade based on all the coursework they haven’t done because the schools have been closed or to receive a grade based on how much their parents can afford to pay. Leaving Certificate examinations will take place according to the published timetable unless they’re cancelled at the last minute.

Transition Year students have been completely forgotten but no doubt somebody will think of something when they remember.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

Norma Foley is 51.

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Teaching from Home

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth on February 3, 2021 by telescoper

Determined to follow the public health advice and work from home I decided to set up a blackboard in my study so I can do lectures online. I find the blackboard shows up better on camera than a whiteboard and using this arrangement allows me to stand up while I deliver the material, which I find much more comfortable than sitting down.

I’m fortunate of course in having enough space to do this. Not every University lecturer can do this.

The bit you see on the board was the start of my second Engineering Mathematics lecture to first-year students. I had asked the students at the end of Lecture 1 to think about the Laplace Transform of f(t)=t and began Lecture 2 by going through the necessary integration on the board.

Today I have three lectures – another Engineering Maths and two Advanced Electromagnetism to give so the board will be more extensively used. I just hope my internet connection stays up!

P. S. Playing back today’s videos I have discovered an optical defect in the Panopto system that makes my hair look grey.

P.P.S. Three lectures in an afternoon (12-1, 2-3 and 4-5) is quite hard work but at least I had breaks between them!

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The Start of Spring Semester

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , , on February 1, 2021 by telescoper

It’s February 1st 2021, which means that today is Imbolc, a Gaelic festival marking the point halfway between the winter solstice and vernal equinox, i.e. it’s a Cross-Quarter Day. To be pedantic, Imbolc is actually the period between this evening and tomorrow evening as in the Celtic calendar days were counted from sunset to sunset.

The first Day of February is also the Feast day of St Brigid of Kildare (c. 451-525), one of Ireland’s patron saints along with Saints Patrick and Colm Cille. One of her miraculous powers was the ability to change water into ale, which perhaps explains her enduring popularity among the Irish.

In Ireland this day is sometimes regarded as the first day of spring, as it is roughly the time when the first spring lambs are born. It corresponds to the Welsh Gŵyl Fair y Canhwyllau and is also known as the `Cross Quarter Day’ or (my favourite) `The Quickening of the Year’. According to legend it is also the day on which jackdaws mate. Given how many of them there are around Maynooth there should be a lot of action today.

Today is, appropriately enough in the light of all this, the start of the Spring Semester of teaching at Maynooth University, the fourth Spring Semester I will have experienced here although this is obviously not like the others in that we’ll be teaching online at least for the first half and probably for the entirety. I was planning to stay at home today but I realised I’d left some things I need in the office on campus so will have to go to collect them. That’s why I’m up early. That and the need to shake myself out of the lockdown torpor that has afflicted me since New Year. It’s time to get my act together, pull my finger out, put my best foot forward, etc.

This Semester I am teaching Engineering Mathematics II, Computational Physics I and Advanced Electromagnetism. The former, what you would probably call a `service course’, covers a mixture of things, mainly Linear Algebra but with some other bits thrown in for fun, such as Laplace transforms. Interestingly I find the Mathematical Physics students do not encounter Laplace Transforms in the first year, but perhaps engineers use them more often than physicists do? I think I’ve written only one paper that made use of a Laplace transform. Anyway, I have to start with this topic as the students need some knowledge of it for some other module they’re taking this semester. I reckon six lectures will be enough to give them what they need. That’s two weeks of lectures, there being three lectures a week for this module.

Once again my teaching timetable for this module is quite nice. I have lectures on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then the students have a choice of tutorial (on either Thursday or Friday). That means I can get through a decent amount of material each week before each tutorial. I don’t do the tutorials, by the way: that’s left to one of our PhD students, who gets paid for doing that and correcting the weekly coursework. There are about 50 students on this module, divided into two courses: Electronic Engineering and Robotics and Intelligent Devices. We don’t have Civil or Mechanical or Chemical Engineering, etc, at Maynooth, in case you were wondering. Lectures will be done as webcasts using Panopto but also recorded for later viewing.

My first Computational Physics lecture, which I will do from home, is on Thursday, after which there is a lab session which we will do via Microsoft Teams. That’s the way we did it after lockdown last year and it worked OK. Students attend one two-hour lab session in addition to the lecture, on either Thursday or Tuesday. The first lecture being on Thursday the first lab session will be Thursday afternoon, with the same material being covered the following Tuesday. Fortunately, Python is free to download and easy to install so it’s quite straightforward to run the labs remotely. Teams has a screen sharing facility so it’s quite easy for myself or my demonstrator to see what is wrong in the same way we would do in a laboratory class.

The Advanced Electromagnetism module is a new one for me but I’m quite looking forward to it. Being a final-year module its content is less prescriptive than others and I’ll be adding a few things that I find interesting. Both lectures for that one are on Wednesdays and again will be given as webcasts with recordings available later.

Today is a particularly busy day because in addition to my first lecture (at 2pm) I have a meeting of Academic Council (3pm via Teams), a Euclid telecon (via Zoom) and a meeting with my PhD student via Teams. I have also been trying to sort out tutors and tutorials for the forthcoming Semester: these don’t start until next week so there’s time, but it has been quite a challenge to get everyone sorted. Fortunately I think that’s now done.

Oh, and another thing. I signed up for Irish language lessons (Beginners Level) and will be having classes once a week from now on.

It’s going to be a very busy term but I reckon being busy is probably going to be a good way to get through the next few months.

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