How-To’s and The Annual Nishina Center Barbecue Party!!!

Thursday marked the fourth day of the Nishina School, when we got to learn detailed information about the three experiments the other students will be performing next week. Moving the start time of the school to 10:30 (which certainly made our commute easier), Dr. Kishida planned the entire day to focus on those three experiments: one lecture […]

Nishina Program Day 3: Nuclear Physics, Detectors, and Oscilloscopes

Today marks the third day of the Nishina Program. Our day started off with a dive into modern nuclear physics. Dr. Ogawa explained the “Magic Numbers” in nuclei: 2, 8, 20, 28, 52, 82, and 126. When a nucleus contains one of these numbers of protons or neutrons, it becomes especially stable compared to nuclei […]

Gamma Rays and Oscilloscopes: the Nishina School Day 2

Today was the second day of the Nishina School! We started the morning off with a lecture by Dr. Kishida on communication. Over the course of the talk, we learned that Dr. Kishida is not only a highly accomplished and brilliant researcher, but is also involved in sharing RIKEN’s extensive scientific discoveries with the public […]

Introductions, Lectures, and Cyclotrons

The first official day of the Ninth Nishina School started today. At exactly 10 AM, all the students and teachers at the Nishina School (12 students total and several ten teachers) gathered together in a large auditorium for the opening ceremony. However, the opening ceremony was less a ceremony than a procession of professors sharing […]

Weekend Activities

Even though the RIKEN aspect of Exeter’s RIKEN program only exists during the week, our first (and only) weekend of the program was far from boring. Saturday morning started out with a Harkness demonstration at Gakugeidai High School, which my host sister happens to attend. Since she was going to participate in the Harkness class as […]

The Wonders of the RIKEN Campus

As we found out today, there is so much more to RIKEN than just its particle accelerator. RIKEN actually stands for RIkagaku KENkyūsho, Japan’s largest research organization (and almost entirely state funded). RIKEN conducts groundbreaking research in nearly every field. At the Wako campus, state of the art laboratories and equipment allow Japan’s top scientists to […]

Sightseeing!

Today, Jeffrey, Mr. Blackwell, Dr. Kishida, and I went sightseeing around Tokyo! Even though this program is physics-centered, I’ve done surprisingly little physics so far – which leaves me both super excited and super nervous for next week. I really appreciate Dr. Kishida taking so much time out of his busy life at RIKEN to […]

Staying with the Yamada’s

First off, let me start by saying that I feel so incredibly lucky to have the Yamada family taking care of me. Their entire family – Masahiro, the dad; Yuko, the mom; Arisa, the older sister; and Mao, the younger sister – is incredibly nice and extremely accommodating. From driving all the way to the […]

Host Family (Tokiwa) – First Impressions

I am very fortunate that my host family, the Tokiwa family, speaks Chinese. After interacting with a slew of taxi drivers, cashiers, and concierges who spoke only Japanese and broken English, I felt an immeasurable amount of relief when I heard the mother ask me, “你是乔子游吗?” – “are you Jeffrey Qiao?” Mr. and Mrs. Tokiwa […]

First Day

After touching down in Narita Airport (NRT), the first thing I noticed was the sweltering heat. Going from a cold, dry airplane into Tokyo’s hot and humid summer shocked me into the reality that I was at the moment alone in a foreign country. Filled with the softly purring engines of hybrid busses, the chatter […]