Profile
Natalia Parzyk
and that's the end of event for me but not for you, students enjoy coming days and good luck for scientist! thanks for chats and questions, it was great to have a chance to talk with you:)
My CV
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Education:
Primary and high school at Poland // Department of Physics, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
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Qualifications:
M.Sc. Eng. (polish equivallent) in Material Engeenering
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Work History:
Demonstrator, University of Warwick
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Current Job:
2nd year Ph.D. student in Physics, University of Warwick
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Read more
I’m working with superconducting materials. By examination of vortex lattice, I’m trying to better understand properties of superconductors.
Few new terms? No worries, let’s start from beginning.. Superconductors, where you may seen them:– superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES)
– more efficiency electricity network so enviromental-friendly. Power cables without any looses are already used not only at LHC but also to powered some cities like Detroit or Copenhagen (partially)
– and that’re just few possible places where you can find superconductors.
But superconductors are still not perfect and causing few problems to be widely used so my research are on superconducting materials to better understand them and then engineer can use new knowledge to improve devices mention above and make much more.
Some materials around you might be superconductors and you even don’t notice. Certain materials became superconductors below specific temperature Tc. Above this temperature there are mostly solid and there is nothing original about them. Any aluminium bit around you? Yes, it’s a superconductor but below 1.2 K (reminder: 1K= 273.16 C). That’s really cold, so lots of liquid nitrogen and helium in use at my work.
What is essential to superconductivity is creation of Cooper pairs (two electron coming together – which is slightly unusual – as electrons normally don’t “like” to be close to each other and those electrons pairs can exists in different states. I’m particularly interest when and why they are in certain type. And I can get my answer by observations and calculations of magnetic field behaviour inside superconductors.
Part of big superconducting family doesn’t allow magnetic field inside the material. But at some superconductors magnetic field can exist inside superconductor forming vortex lattice. You can think about vortex as a tornado (same shape) but at much more smaller scale. I can observe vortex by using muons (which are very sensitive for magnetic field) or neutrons.
Apart from being a science adicted also can’t leave without mountains (so far they are only two adiction that i recognize in myself or maybe coffe and chocolate also?;)
And at any time when I can alow myself for a break, once a few months I’m going for weekend to Poland to see my family or friends in Cracow – anybody been in Cracow? I’ve done my undergrads there so now it preety well:) But at most of my breaks I’m runing away to the mountains. British one like Lake, Snowdonia, Yorkshire, Highlands.. Have you ever been on top of Snowdon or Helvellyn or An Gearanach, so much fun:) been there with my uni club Warwick Mountains . Also been in the Alps this summer and already know how much I want to came back.
The same like above, on slightly different way;) -
What I'd do with the prize money:
I want to create a superconducting levitating train model. It can be taken for school and also used for uni open days etc. Probably it wouldn’t be as fast like real one, but still with trees, houses and liquid nitrogen involve to cooling down it should be quite fun. Model like that is a really nice start for discovering physics of superconductors and physics at all. I wish to take you for ‘Physics Tour’ and levitating train (model;) would be a good way to do it. What you think?
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
adventurous, ambitious, active (..scientist, but it doesn’t starts on “a”;)
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Yeah, talking, talking and more talking;)
Who is your favourite singer or band?
at random order: Pink Floyd, Pearl Jam, Jacek Kaczmarski, GnR, Idelwield, Miles Davis, Marcus Miller, Led Zeppelin, Tess, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Chris Botti, James Blunt, Tom Waits, Marillion.. want’s to know more?:)
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
Annapurna (26,545 ft), Lhotse (27,940 ft), K2 (28,251 ft) ?! ;) and can I have 4th one? please? Nature (or Science) paper!
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