24-406: Blackhall Road is a road running between Keble Road to the north and Museum Road to the south in central Oxford , England , dating from the late 19th century. It is named after Black Hall, dating from at least 1519, fronting onto St Giles' , and now part of St John's College . Houses in the road were leased by St John's College between 1865–75. Keble College occupies the entire east side of
48-492: A field that was popular at the time of the building's construction. However, it was discovered that the field was extremely complex and progress was slow. The field was overtaken by other fields in nuclear physics, and the accelerators in the Denys Wilkinson Building fell into disuse. The building was designed around conducting particle physics. The bulk of the accelerator infrastructure and experimental target station
72-480: A large magnetic field. The now positively charged nuclei would then be electrostatically repelled by the same charge, accelerating them back down another vacuum tube. At the bottom the beam pipe exited, the beam was bent 90° by another magnet before entering a linear accelerator. This particular accelerator consisted of a pressure vessel, about 40 feet tall, containing an annular lift/elevator platform to enable work to be carried out at different levels inside. Stacked in
96-461: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This England road or road transport-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Denys Wilkinson Building The Denys Wilkinson Building is a prominent 1960s building in Oxford , England, designed by Philip Dowson at Arup in 1967. The building houses the astrophysics and particle physics sub-departments of
120-756: Is a row of Victorian terrace houses owned by the University of Oxford . The houses nearest Parks Road (numbers 6–11) were converted into the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (OUCL), now the Department of Computer Science , with its newer Wolfson Building added behind in 1993, and the Oxford e-Science Building in 2006 (both in Parks Road). Oxford University's 1960s Denys Wilkinson Building ( Particle physics , John Adams Institute and astrophysics )
144-647: Is in Keble Road, on the corner with Banbury Road. The Department of Theoretical Physics is at 1 Keble Road. The Oxford e-Research Centre ( OeRC ) is at 7 Keble Road. The area to the north of Keble Road, bounded by Banbury Road and Parks Road, is known as the Keble Road Triangle and forms part of Oxford University 's Science Area , with a number of its science department buildings located here. A blue plaque commemorating James Legge (1815–1897), Sinologist and translator, first Professor of Chinese at Oxford,
168-431: Is in basement levels. The walls of the building at the lower levels are very thick concrete and are laden with boron. This was to keep the natural background radiation count inside the building as low as possible, and not (as was the popular and local civic belief) to keep radiation in. Some of the more exposed parts of the building suffered from rebar corrosion. The building was originally going to be further extended on
192-483: Is the Oxford University Museum of Natural History where a number of fossilized dinosaur skeletons can be seen. There was a hatching-dinosaur-egg addition on the wall for a while but it has disappeared. 51°45′31″N 1°15′31″W / 51.7585°N 1.2585°W / 51.7585; -1.2585 Keble Road Keble Road is a short road running east–west in central Oxford , England . To
216-645: The Department of Physics at Oxford University , plus the undergraduate teaching laboratories. It was originally built for the then Department of Nuclear Physics and named the Nuclear Physics Laboratory . From 1988, the building was known as the Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory (NAPL) after the (Sub-)Department of Astrophysics moved from the University Observatory in the Science Area . In 2001,
240-435: The Keble Road Triangle . Attached is a large and distinctive fan-shaped superstructure that was built to house a Van de Graaff generator . Nikolaus Pevsner commented that this marked "the arrival of the ' New Brutalism ' in Oxford". The building was originally built to host two small (by today's standards) particle accelerators. The first was a vertical folded tandem electrostatic accelerator (see Tandem accelerators ,
264-695: The blue dinosaur, perhaps intended to resemble an alligator, is a riposte "I DID, AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO ME" . It is thought that the white graffiti, the earlier of the two, was the work of delegates at the Drapers' Conference at Keble in the early 1970s and was a reply to the students of Keble's neighbour St John's College who had formed the St John’s Destroy Keble Society. An alternative version suggests that students from Wadham and Somerville Colleges were responsible. Close by in Parks Road
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#1732876461719288-461: The bottom, with no lateral supports whatsoever. The pressure vessel was filled with sulphur hexafluoride gas. The storage tank for this was located outside on the eastern side of the building. The gas served as an insulator, allowing higher voltages on the Van de Graaff generator to be run resulting in greater particle energies being attained than if air had been used. It also served as a fire suppressant, in
312-469: The building was renamed as the Denys Wilkinson Building, in honour of the British nuclear physicist Sir Denys Wilkinson (1922–2016), who was involved in its original creation. The building is located on the corner of Banbury Road to the west and Keble Road to the south. To the north is the tall Thom Building of Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science, also built in the 1960s. It forms part of
336-423: The centre was the accelerator column, comprising the Van de Graaff generator (a thick, rubber/canvas belt approximately 2 feet wide), the up/down vacuum tubes, and the electron stripper and magnet systems on top. The magnet was powered by a generator driven the by Van de Graaff belt. The column was surrounded by electrostatic discharge protection rings, in case of sparks. The whole column was resting on glass bricks at
360-410: The eastern side, but the funding never became available. In the 1970s and 1980s, the building's basement was also designated as the emergency shelter for Oxford City Council . There was occasionally tension with the local council, which periodically tried to shut down the "Nuclear Physics Department" of the university. Generally, such tensions were resolved with arranged visits, and explanations as to
384-513: The event of a spark discharge (which, when they did occur, was described as being "very loud indeed"). The sulphur hexafluoride was sourced from a company in Italy, and occasionally shipments of " bomb ola di gas" addressed to the "Nuclear Physics Department" Oxford would get stuck on the Italian/French border. This was an RF resonant cavity accelerator and would add additional energy to the nuclei. It
408-405: The road, including the O'Reilly Theatre . In the 1970s, the architects Ahrends, Burton and Koralek designed yellow brick buildings on the southern part of Blackhall Road. These include the "Elephant House" at the southern end, nicknamed due to its resemblance to the elephant house at London Zoo . At the southern end on the west side are houses owned by St John's College . At the northern end to
432-521: The role it would also serve for the councillors in the event of a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom. The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science (JAI), named for John Adams (physicist) , is located in the building. The JAI was established in 2004 as a joint venture between the Departments of Physics at Oxford and Royal Holloway University of London , with Imperial College London joining
456-407: The top being at floor level in the fan-shaped superstructure, the bottom in the basements. Negatively charged ions were introduced at the bottom and would be accelerated towards the large charge (10 million volts) built up by the Van de Graaff generator by electrostatic attraction. At the top, the ions would pass through a thin foil to strip off electrons, and then their trajectory would be bent 180° by
480-545: The west is the Department of Statistics of the University of Oxford , until 2013 the Mathematical Institute . The historian J.K. Fotheringham (1874–1936), an expert on ancient astronomy and chronology, and Fellow of Magdalen College , lived at 6 Blackhall Road. The classical historian Abel Hendy Jones Greenidge lived at 4 Blackhall Road. The poet and art critic Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy (1890–1965), an associate of
504-565: The west is the southern end of the Banbury Road with St Giles' Church opposite. To the east is Parks Road with the University Parks opposite. Blackhall Road leads off the road to the south near the western end. On the south side for much of its length is the Victorian brick Keble College , and in particular, its large chapel on the corner with Parks Road. Opposite this to the north
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#1732876461719528-417: The writer D.H. Lawrence , also lived in the road when they met in 1915. The road includes one of the longest lasting and still extant pieces of outdoor graffiti in Oxford. On a brick wall forming part of Keble College , opposite the Department of Statistics building, are two large dinosaurs in white and blue paint. The caption "REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DINOSAUR!" is next to the white dinosaur. By
552-487: Was located down in a basement. On exiting the accelerator the nuclei would drift to a target station for experiments. The particle energy at the target station was about 22MeV. In the late 1980s, this accelerator was sold to Beijing University. To extract it holes had to be cut through the floor of the covered loading dock located at the north side of the building all the way down to the lowest basement. The accelerators were intended to support research into nuclear structure,
576-565: Was unveiled at 3 Keble Road, on 16 May 2018. William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College and famed for " Spoonerisms ", lived at 11 Keble Road, now part of the Department of Computer Science at Oxford, and an Oxfordshire Blue Plaque commemorating him was unveiled on 19 October 2024. Sub-departments of the Department of Physics of the University of Oxford , located on Keble Road: 51°45′34″N 1°15′32″W / 51.7594°N 1.2588°W / 51.7594; -1.2588 This Oxfordshire location article
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