Meet...Dr Sadie Jones

I appeared in the University of Southampton, Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering Newsletter this month :)

Meet...Dr Sadie Jones Can you tell us about yourself and your role within Physics and Astronomy? I work as the Outreach Leader in Astronomy. My job involves managing a group of PhD and Undergraduate Astronomy students who work with the mobile planetarium. We go out into schools to do shows for Primary - A–level student groups, and also do shows on campus for events like Open Days and BBC Stargazing Live. What do you think are the benefits of the outreach work carried out in the department? I think its important to show students of all ages in local schools what real scientists in the UoS look like and also it's important for the students to realise that scientists are just normal people and that science is a realistic job prospect for them. There are still so many questions we don't know the answer to so it is important we inspire the next generation of physicists and astronomers to further our understanding of the Universe. Can you tell us about some of the activities you carry out in the outreach team? We go out into schools twice a week during term time with the mobile planetarium. I also give a talks on aliens for primary level which features inflatable planets and I give a talk on Supermassive Black holes for GCSE, A-level and Astronomy societies, which focuses on my PhD research. I am especially excited because I will be joining the UoS Roadshow at Bestival talking about the INTEGRAL gamma ray telescope and other UoS astrophysics  research to the festival goers. Are you enjoying being a science correspondent on BBC Radio Solent? Yes, It's really fun. I enjoy doing the background research on the 3 science stories and it's an adrenaline rush to explain them live on radio when I don't know what questions I will be asked about the stories.  I am learning so much more about recent UK science news as a result and I hope the listeners learn more too. If you want to keep up to date on all the latest news from the Astronomy Outreach team your can follow them on Twitter @SotonAstrodome

How I ended up as an Astronomer ?

Never underestimate the importance of enthusiastic teachers who love their subject. It was this lack of enthusiasm that lead me away from my dream job at 16. I was very creative and after making my own web page had decided that Art and Computing was where my future would be......


However my art and computing teachers were no where near as excited or enthused as my Physics and Maths teachers were during my GCSE and College studies. Actually I sensed that my computing teacher hated computing and that my art teachers were just jealous that some artists in my class were alot better them. Meanwhile my physics teacher was telling us all these inspiring stories about crazy physicists with gold noses, who fly kites in thunderstorms and get hit on the head with apples etc. So, even though I had aspirations and dreams of becoming an interior designer/artist/fashion designer/graphic designer/web-page designer, I actually ended up liking Physics and Maths more. 


I enjoyed that you could work through your formulas do your calculations and you could be very confident of getting all the marks. This was just the opposite in art where I felt exceptional artists could do amazing pieces of work and the art teachers interpretation of it would be a grade E, where as in my own opnion these great artists deserved a B in the least...it was all a bit "hand wavy"..This is why I feel maths with mechanics/physics thrown in is so awesome. You get a nice sense of achievement when you get your answer out, especially when you know the answer is a real value with physical meaning. for eg. the speed you would have to throw a creme egg to get it to escape the earths atmosphere...... its not just maths, for the sake of maths! 





So....I ended up in Astronomy specifically, as opposed to just Physics..manily because of all the pretty Hubble images of space that were about at the time. This imagery appealled to my creative side, and showed me that Physics and Astronomy was not only beautiful from equations, theory and formula point of view, but also you could see it's beauty. 

The Butterfly Nebula credit: Hubble

Looking at these images allowed my imagination to run a bit wild. The history of astronomy was also rather interesting to me; it taught me that to learn about our environment, some times the answer is far away in space.......Lots of physical laws e.g. gravity were discovered by scientists looking beyond earth, to the planets and out into the galaxy.