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Episode 13

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Published on:

2nd Feb 2023

A tour of the Cavendish's new home with Andy Parker

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This is episode 13 of People Doing Physics, the podcast from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. This month marks our first birthday! One year, 12 guests, each one looking into their very own journey and connection with Physics.  

For this special anniversary episode, we’ve asked the head of the Cavendish Laboratory, Professor Andy Parker to take us to a building site. Not any building site though. The one, just across the road from the department’s current location, where the newest home for the Cavendish Laboratory will open in 2024.  

A Professor of High Energy Physics, Andy joined the Cavendish as a lecturer in 1989. He served as Deputy Head of Department for 3 years before becoming Head of Department in 2013.  

Who better than Andy then, who has overseen this immense project for the best part of the past 10 years, to show us around and talk about what the new building means for the future of physics in Cambridge and nationally?  

With him we wandered and we roamed and we talked: about particle physics, ever bigger underground tunnels, and a lost spring on the carpet.  

[00:36] – Guest’s intro

[01:38] – A walk through the Ray Dolby Centre – part 1

[07:07] – Back in the studio: how dismantling things as a kid lead to a career in physics

[08:38] – The world of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research

[11:35] – 300 Neutrino collisions

[12:40] – Young and foolish scientists solving the R&D issues related to construction of the Large Hadron Collider, and its ATLAS inner detector.

[15:40] – Developing the next 100 km long accelerator

[20:25] - A walk through the Ray Dolby Centre – part 2

[25:15] – Rebuilding a new laboratory and attracting the crème de la crème in physics

[29:25] - Raising millions towards developing new physics and pushing towards the unknown

[33:16] – The great relief

[34:59] – What’s coming and exciting in Physics in the Ray Dolby Centre and elsewhere?  

[37:40] – Outro  

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Episode credits

  • Hosts: Jacob Butler and Vanessa Bismuth
  • Recording and Editing: Chris Brock


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About the Podcast

People doing Physics
The podcast exploring the personal side of physics
As fascinating as physics can be, it can also seem very abstract, but behind each experiment and discovery stands a real person trying to understand the universe. Join us at the Cavendish Laboratory on the first Thursday of every month as we get up close and personal with the researchers, technicians, students, teachers, and people that are the beating heart of Cambridge University’s Physics department. Each episode also covers the most exciting and up-to-date physics news coming out of our labs. If you want to know what goes on behind the doors of a Physics department, are curious to know how people get into physics, or simply wonder what physicists think and dream about, listen in!
Join us on Twitter @DeptofPhysics using the hashtag #PeopleDoingPhysics.

About your hosts

Vanessa Bismuth

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I'm the Cavendish's Communications Manager and I want the world to know about the extraordinary people that are working, researching and studying here.

Jacob Breward Butler

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Working in the Outreach Office of the Cavendish Laboratory, I run Cambridge University's educational Physics outreach programmes while studying a part-time Masters' in Education.

Charles Walker

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As a researcher at Cavendish Astrophysics and Selwyn College, Cambridge, I help develop and use radio telescopes to learn more about the Universe, and perform outreach to help others learn more about our work, and us!