Week 5+ summary

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Some things I've been doing lately:
- Chess club and bujinkan lessons. Both still very fun.
- Hanging out in the bar, going to parties. Someone from my department just got married, and gave a really great party with lots of interesting people and Spanish delicacies.
- Giving interviews because of the prize I won. General press release and already one follow-up (computable).
- Attending various lectures, meetings, seminars, etc.

Work

I've been working on implementing linear and nonlinear elasticity finite element codes. This is basically to learn the concepts and challenges involved so I can better understand the larger and more complicated systems I'll be working with.

Easy explanation:

If you have a solid object, like a piece of steel or rubber, and you push it, it will deform. How this works can be modeled mathematically as the external forces (you pushing it) and internal forces (the material wanting to bounce back to its original shape) being in balance.

These equations can then be solved using a computer, using a finite element method. This basically involves solving these equations not at every point in the material, but only in a limited number of points, and assuming the solution varies smoothly in between the known points.

Some examples:
A simple model of a bridge, with forces applied to the middle section. The more accurate solutions are about the same as the less accurate one, which shows the code is working properly.

And now for something completely different:
That is, what things about England/Oxford have I noticed  that are different than the Netherlands/Groningen? Well, many, and here are some:

The roads are fairly small, patched up with holes in them everywhere. In part probably because Oxford is so old and not really designed for cars+bikes.
Likewise, the cycle lanes are very small, full of holes, and overtaking other bikes is not really possible without going on the main road. Inline skating is impossible.

Supermarkets here have a "self checkout", where you can scan the products, pay any way you want. A bit weird at first, but considering that there are about 4x as many of these as staff, a lot faster. Also, shops are open 7 days a week.


Everyone says 'sorry' for even the slightest little mishaps in everyday encounters, like having to make half a step to the right in the street. This is both slightly annoying as well as highly contagious.

Feel free to post questions or suggestions in the comments if you want to know more about a particular thing. As long as I don't have any idea what to talk about I'm less likely to blog at all.