Kiishi and Hannah have spent five days within the Diamond Communications team as part of their work experience week. They’ve shared their experience, with a special focus on engineering, in this article.
2018 is the Year of Engineering. A national campaign to celebrate the world and wonder of engineering and increase awareness and understanding of what engineers do among young people. Engineering is a vital part of everyday life, from coffee machines and smartphones, to Mars rovers and artificial intelligence.
Some ways in which Diamond encourages young people to get into engineering include through open days; the facility hosts five every year as well as workshops for prospective students who are interested in the field of science and engineering. Recently Diamond ran Project M which involved collecting 1000 samples of calcium carbonate from 100 schools across the country. These samples were analysed by Diamond and the results were sent back to the schools to process. They were interested in finding out how different additives affect the forms of calcium carbonate produced. This project was the first ‘citizen science’ project at Diamond and allowed schools to really get involved in a genuine scientific experiment. This is just one example of how Diamond is very much community based and strives to involve local residents and really get people excited about engineering.
>Read more on the Diamond Light Source website