Imperial College London – University of Delaware Exchange 2007 Review
Katerina Strakova
4th Year Physics, Imperial College London
I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the five Imperial College students to undertake an undergraduate research project at the University of Delaware in summer 2007.
I worked under Professor Matt Decamp in the Physics Department in Sharp Laboratory. His research interest is in intense laser interaction with matter. My project involved building a gravity driven liquid jet that would be used to produce X-Ray pulses by interaction of a high power focused laser beam with a thin film of copper solution. This was a challenging task as Prof. DeCamp was only just starting his research in Delaware and all the laboratory equipment was still under construction. This meant that I had to design my piece of equipment as well as find the cheapest and most suitable equipment to be ordered. On many occasions I had to improvise and cooperate with the Physics machine shop as well as the Chemistry department glassblowers, because some of the pieces were not commercially available.