I am organising another trip to the Diamond Synchrotron for October 2014. I don't have the dates yet as they only publish them 6-8 weeks beforehand. It will be either a Saturday or Sunday.
"Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. By accelerating electrons to near light-speed, Diamond generates brilliant beams of light from infra-red to X-rays which are used for academic and industry research."
You can find out more info on their WEBSITE (http://www.diamond.ac.uk/Home.html) or by watching this VIDEO (http://youtu.be/4tpHZwsLB-Y).
I've been twice now, once with London Hackspace and last year with a few OAS members. The synchrotron is basically a mini-version of the LHC but instead of accelerating and smashing electrons it does the same thing with X-Ray light.
The open day is completely free and will last around 2 hours. You will just need to make your own way there. I would suggest car sharing where possible.
Cheers,
Mike
The dates for the Diamond Synchrotron visits are:
Saturday 25th October
If you would like to go on any of these dates then please register your interest here and let me know which date. I need to know in advance as the dates go very quickly and once they announce registration is open I will need to move quickly to book spaces.
Mike
I'll give it a miss this time though it was a great visit last year.
Curiously, in another context half a dozen years later, I came across a document that tells you (probably) far more than you ever wanted to know about some of the design, and particularly the business of keeping the huge electromagnetic fields involved in driving the accelerator from interfering with the extremely sensitive detectors needed to get useful results.
See Maxwell's Equations, Quantum Electrodynamics, and good installation practices for SI, PI and EMC (https://tinyurl.com/y44g28pt).