• Question: how big is you lab what time do you get up

    Asked by 856grte47 to Christian, Alice, Bose, Emma, Steve on 4 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Alice Harpole

      Alice Harpole answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      I’d estimate my office was about 5×5 metres, and I share it with 3 other PhD students (though it’s very rare that we’re all in the office at the same time). As a PhD student, the working hours are pretty flexible. I get up just before 8am, and tend to be in the office 9.30am-6pm (though when I leave changes a lot depending on what I’m working on that day). However, other people in my group keep very different hours – there are several who don’t get in before midday and tend to stay until late in the evening.

    • Photo: Christian Killow

      Christian Killow answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      My lab is the Universe! So it’s pretty big. On a more day-to-day basis, my lab is a more confined space: we have a clean room which is about 8m * 8m, a semi-clean room which is about the same, and another semi-clean room for experimental activities and is about 12m * 6m.

      I’m guessing the dimensions but I don’t think I’m far off. I do a lot of work with lasers, so none of my labs have windows – this often results in a leaving-the-cinema like experience: I walk out of the lab and think “whoa, it’s dark, when did that happen?!”.

      As for getting up time, much earlier than I would like! My son wakes up at about 6am, so that’s when we get up. Before he came along I got up at around 7:30am, although it depends on what’s happening on a given day. If I’m getting the ‘red-eye’ flight somewhere for a meeting then I’ll have to be at Glasgow airport for 6am or so. I’m not going to lie, that’s not much fun and involves getting up not very long after I’ve gone to bed.

    • Photo: Steve Marsden

      Steve Marsden answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      The lab I’m affiliated to is CERN, home of the LHC. There are a couple of sites, which together come to one or two square kilometres. The LHC itself is a ring 27 km long, underground beneath the CERN sites and the surrounding corn fields. There are several thousand physicists, and a few thousand engineers (I think).

      I was based at CERN for half a year, but most of the time I work out of the University of Manchester. The office is similar to that describe by Alice. I have a 5×5 metre office which I share with 2 PhD students and one other post-doc (a person who has completed a PhD in the last few years).

      There are no set office hours, so long as the work gets done. I get up at 6:30 to fit in with my girlfriend’s routine. Left to our own devices most people arrive mid morning and stay into the evening. In part this is because a lot of the time we are collaborating with people in the US, which means that meetings will be scheduled in the early evening.

    • Photo: Benjamin Bose

      Benjamin Bose answered on 6 Mar 2016:

      My office is about 7m x 7m on the 3rd floor with two very large windows at one side overlooking Old Portsmouth and Isle of Wight in the distance. You can see the bigger ships moving through the Solent very well.

      I share it with 6 other Phd students from 5 different countries. On average I get up before 9am and get into the office at around 10:30 – 11am. Believe it or not I am usually the first in the office 😮

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