Bangor and the University College of North Wales

1966-67

Bangor, North Wales is located on the Menai Strait and is the home of the University College of North Wales, where Rod did a post-doc in the Department of Chemistry under the direction of Professor John Sheridan. You can see the typical architecture of Welsh towns with long rows of attached houses that follow the landscape. In the center is the square tower of Bangor Cathedral. The residential area of Bangor extends up the side of Bangor Mountain.

The main building of the Univerity College of North Wales was set up on a ridge above most of the other buildings, and was commonly and I suppose affectionately referred to as "Top Col".

The square, tall building in the center of the picture is the Department of Chemistry building where Rod worked in the microwave spectroscopy laboratory. The hospital where Brenda worked as a nurse is the building immediately behind the Chemistry Building, so that was convenient.

Chemistry graduate student John Griffith works with the glass vacuum system which is used to let the gases to be studied into the copper waveguide. There they were subjected to microwave energy to measure the frequencies at which the rotating molecules absorbed microwaves. From those absorption frequencies could be calculated bond lengths, angles, and other structural information about molecules, a "molecular microscope".

Above, Valerie Williams adjusts the glass vacuum system which allows the gas to be studied into the experimental waveguide chamber. Graham Williams and his wife Valerie were both graduate students in chemistry. They were working on Ph. D. theses in microwave spectroscopy. Graham is working with some of the electronics which produces and controls the microwave radiation to send down the waveguide and through the sample gas.