SXR208: Day 7

Day 7 - wrap up

Nothing special today except for a wrap up meeting in the hotel at 2pm. So a chance to catch up on sleep until then with no project reading to be done. I think by now we were all pretty tired, so the chance of sleeping in until late was good. We ventured out for some breakfast/lunch at about midday, I can't remember what we had.

Then we went to the bar area to meet up for the final briefing. Here we had to get the final details, and also let them know what project we were going to write up.

Finally a photo by the swimming pool - I don't think anyone had ventured into it, but it made a nice foredrop.

I could go on to tell you about the drinks in the local bar that night, the um slightly odd "live" music they had in the bar, and those people who stayed there till 4am and nearly missed their flight, but I won't bother.

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SXR208: Day 6

Day 6 - CMD of clusters

 The last proper lab session tonight - and looking like the skies are clearing too. If so this could be a really good session. We have to look at clusters, two open and one globular. This was our final night and would be assessed from beginning to end.

We started by selecting 3 different choices of nebula, with a couple of backups. We hoped to get M35, M67 and M3. We then worked a plan of observing together with our darks, flats and biases we would need.

We then set about the task of getting the nights images. What cloud there was seemed to be quickly fading and things were looking good.

We took our calibration frames quickly and then searched for a reference star nearby the target to synchronise the telescope to. We had to wait for the cloud to shift, and at the same time the team in the labs were producing finding charts for the object chosen so we'd know it when we found it.

We found our first target and took several images of it, in both the V and V bands using filters for M35.

We were going to try our second open cluster, but to our horror found it was right next to the full moon. So we skipped that one for now and went on to look at the globular cluster, M3.

We got some good images of this, in both bands, and sent them off for analysis by the team in the lab.
We then had our midnight snack, and by now the moon had moved a bit, and we wondered if we might get our final target. It looked a little close, but we gave it a shot, and it worked out OK.

We were then going to try for one of our secondary targets, but the telescope went a little weird, it reset itself and decided it was now midday in 2002 so all our coordinates were off. This despite being equipped with GPS. The course director took a look at it, but decided it couldn't be fixed right now - seemed to be an issue with power sources. Anyway, we had enough data, so we all joined in on the analysis.

After gathering data from lots of selected stars, and plotting them on a graph, we were able to make a reasonable Hertzsprung Russel diagram with a part of the main sequence and the red giant turn off arm. This allowed us to estimate the age of each of the clusters, although our error bars were pretty huge.

However it was a very successful night, and with more data and more processing time we could have got a better estimate. A very positive end to the weeks observing. Back to the hotel and a quick walk on the beach at 5:30 in the morning - it was empty! The skies were a little light polluted too - so we could only see the main constellations, and the moon we'd hoped would be nestling over the water had set. So we all went to bed!

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SXR208: Day 5

Day 5 -Photometry

After getting up late again - there was breakfast to be found - although it was lunchtime. Later I found some cake and coffee with a friend before starting the trip to the observatory.

Today we'll be looking at some key stars to try and work out how bright they are and what effect the angle ot looking at them has on the amount of light. This is called the light extinction plot, and gives you a simple equation that relates the angle you are looking at the star to the amount of light absorbed at a couple of wavelengths. In this way you can compensate for the angle you're looking at a star for and get a much closer idea of its real magnitude.

We had our planning session and picked two stars that we might go for, despite the weather looking pretty unspectacular.

The night was cloudy so we didn't get any real data, although we went through the usual procedures of setting up and parking the telescope.

We had to look at stars in both B and V bands and do various calculations on them. There was also a lot of work on errors that we had to work through.

We had a good time - but what with the error calculations and cloudy skies it wasn't my favourite investigation, although chatting with the tutor who was a professional astronomer was well worth while.

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SXR208: Day 4

Day 4 - Spectroscopy

Today we hope to take spectrographic images of stars. It is quite amazing what you can do with a spectrum fo a star. You can work out what its made from, how big it is, which direction it is moving and all sorts of other things, which rather puts the final nail in the quote 

"On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are ... necessarily denied to us. While we can conceive of the possibility of determining their shapes, their sizes, and their motions, we shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition or their mineralogical structure ... Our knowledge concerning their gaseous envelopes is necessarily limited to their existence, size ... and refractive power, we shall not at all be able to determine their chemical composition or even their density... I regard any notion concerning the true mean temperature of the various stars as forever denied to us."

— Auguste Comte,

Waking up around 11:00, we headed toward the beach in search of food, and found a rather good paella, with lots of sea food in it. The sort that sticks out and looks at you.

Then after reading up on the evenings project, I met with some of my group. Some of the group wanted pre meeting planning to get things ready for the planning meeting. I arrived late, but joined in, and then it was soon time to board the bus. Another talk in the planetarium and then the planning session, where we again identified stars. Then off to get some food - very nice it was all week.

Then to the work in hand. First we had to calibrate the spectrometer. So this was done with a He-Ar lamp which produces a well defined spectrum. We took an image of this and then went off to the lab to make a calibration graph so we would be able to analyse the spectra we were to take.

Then the team I was in went off hunting around the sky for our targets. The first two were nice and easy to find, Arcturus and Regulus. We managed to get these stars onto the diffraction grating slit without too much trouble, but still made a couple of mistakes, but we had time as the clouds drifted by. We stopped for the midnight snack and lots of coffee.

Then it was onto a fainter object, BD+31 2750 - trips off the tongue! Finally Saturn just before the clouds rolled in and we had to stop for the night.

We managed to extract a few spectra, but some of our graphs seemed to be off by about 4nm. Something we couldn't explain despite redoing the calibration. We had a debrief with Andy which went pretty well, we decided we needed more data really. This was our first experience using real data, and we were all quite excited to have done something real.
The bus at 4:30am, and back home to bed at about 5:30 and make sure those do not disturb signs firmly attached.

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SXR208: Day 3

Day 3 - Binary Stars
The pressure steps up as today we do real projects, projects that are assessed. We started with a lunch/breakfast at Jaime's. A simple baguette of ham and cheese, but with salad and a fried egg in it - unexpected but yummy!

Today we're doing binary stars, trying to detect the presence of one star orbiting another. The weather looks foul, so I think we'll be working with archive data.
There was an initial talk scheduled, but a power cut at the site put pay to that for a while, but soon power was restored and we got going again.

We first had to have a planning meeting where our team decided on what star to look at from a list of candidates, what exposures and so on.

We first had to process the images, to subtract dark, bias and flats. Then we had to do some comparative photometry. Comparing the target star to a reference star to see if it changed in brightness. A couple of check stars were also included to check that the reference star wasn't varying too.
Luckily Maxim DL does a lot of the hard work for you here.


We then exported the collected data into excel and plotted a graph, and wow, it looked as though we had detected something.

There we have it - clear evidence of a periodic dip in brightness. We then had to go off and do protracted calculations to work out from this the period, and using some other data how massive the two stars were as a result. Pretty impressive stuff.
We then again went through the motions of setting up the telescope and taking the requisite basic images - as, like the tutor said, you need to be quick at doing this, because if you get clear skies tomorrow it will save you time to have practised.

We then finished off our data, and then met up at about 4:00am to discuss it with our tutor. Then home to the hotel and crash out until tomorrow.

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SXR208: Day 2

Day two of the residential, and the first full night scheduled.

Today we get to play with telescopes, and start getting into the rhythm of the course.

It's a bus at 4:30 to get us to the observatory at about 5:30, we then have a talk in the planetarium. Tonight's was about the software we would be using, Maxim DL and excel. How we would be taking bias, flats and dark frames to allow better processing of the science images that we would take later.
 
Bias frames are a dump of the CCD detector to sense the effect the bias voltage on the chip has, this can then be subtracted from the full images.
Dark frames are exposures taken for the same time as the science frames, but with the shutter closed. This allows an estimation of the thermal noise that would occur on the image, and again can be averaged across several frames and subtracted.
Finally flat frames are images taken on a lit white image (a big round target held up to the telescope lit with a lamp) that allowed for vignetting, dust and other oddities of the optics to be taken into account and subtracted.

We spent the first half of the night in the lab, occasionally looking outside at the clear skies. We did some Maxim and excel processing of data, and my partner for the night and I were both pretty computer literate, we zoomed through the tasks. We finished with over an hour to spare, and the course director suggested that as there was a telescope spare we could have a play with it. We got it all set up and ready to run, and focused on Saturn, when they had a breakdown in one of the other domes, and kicked us out! So close.

Midnight, and after our snack session and quite a lot of strong coffee, it was our legitimate time in the domes. However the sky had clouded over and nothing was visible now. So we went through the motions of setting up the telescope, taking darks, flats and biases, and then went through the shut down procedures for parking the telescope. Then after a bit more time in the lab, we went back to the bus at 4:00am for the ride back to the hotel. There we had to attract attention to get the main door open, and then to bed. Everyone had to remember to hang the "Do not disturb" signs on their door, as no one wanted their room cleaning whilst trying to sleep!

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SXR208: Day 1

Day one of the residential school in Mallorca.

I'd arrived the previous day, an early flight meant getting up even earlier to get to the airport (2am) so it seemed sensible as the first night was scheduled to end after midnight to arrive the previous day and at least get some sleep.

The formal part of the day started with registration at 4pm, and then some sitting around in the bar area waiting for the bus to arrive to take us to the observatory. It's about a 50min journey into the middle of the island, down increasingly tiny roads to get to the observatory. We were about half way there, where the bus broke down. Overheating apparently, but they said there would be a replacement in 20 minutes. Much to everyone's surprise, they were good to their word, and we reached the observatory just 20 mins late.

We arrived in the pouring rain, and the nights scheduled stargazing look like it wasn't going to happen. We split into groups and went for a tour of the site, with coats on in the rain. We got familiar with where the various buildings were and how to get between them, in the dark "No running and use torches" was the mantra drummed into all of us.

We got given our documents, a clipboard, a notebook and a planisphere set for the local longitude. We had a good lunch and then went to the planetarium for a show, and ended with stargazing in the dome, given the inclement weather.

The night ended at about midnight, and the trip back to the hotel, uneventful this time.

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SXR208: The Preschool assessment

Its nearly time to go to this, its come around quite quickly.

Before you can go though, you have to complete a pre school assessment. This is based on the text book provided with the course, and consists of an online test with, in this case, 28 questions.
I thought the questions might be quite easy, but I struggled to answer more than a couple without referring back to the book.
It has questions on the following

• Positional Astronomy (5) - this is things like right acension and declination, local zeniths and so on. How to find stars and the celestial sphere. Apart from one nasty question where a labelled star was rather ambiguous, and I picked the one to the left of the label, when it should have been to the right, I did ok on most of these.
• Astronomical Detectors (5) - focal lengths, resolution of telescopes, all covered under this topic.
• Spectrographs (3) - use of the grating equation, and other details to do with interpreting spectra of stars comes under this category.
• Photometry (5) - Things to do with light, star magnitudes and relative brightness under this.
• Interpreting images (5) - Here you are given pictures of craters and similar on other planets/moons/asteroids. You have to interpret the features, based on light angles and also measure the features given the scale of the image.
• Experimental uncertainties (6) - How to deal with errors, ending with an absolute stinker of a question where you need to combine experimental errors in an equation involving powers and multiplication to work out what sort of error in one parameter requires in the measurement of another. I did quite a bit of algebra on this, and amazed myself after getting thoroughly confused doing it twice, adapting an equation rather freely, but coming out with a number that was marked correct.
• Meade Simulator (1) - In this question you are provided with a computer simulation of the Meade Telescope control software, and have to calibrate it and then slew it to a couple of stars and end up with a result that the software then checks. I got it wrong the first time, because I forgot to turn off all the handy feature which projects a map onto the sky! Not very realistic!

Anyway - for most of them you get 3 attempts - and a hint if you get it wrong twice. Your score is reduced if you don't get it right first time.  My results were:

• 1 where I took the full 3 attempts (that dratted labelled star in the first set)
• 5 where I had a second go - so correct at the second attempt. Some through stupidity, and some were a fair cop.
• The rest I managed on the first attempt - after much checking in some cases.

Anyway, so now I'm ready to go - in just over a weeks time!

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SXR208: Observing the Universe

Its the last year for many residential courses in the science faculty. Something we'll all miss badly.
So I've always wanted to go on this course, and this year I'm not doing too many other courses, so as it is the last year, I'm grabbing it.

It's a week in Majorca, at an observatory, sleeping by day, doing astronomy by night. The first set of materials have arrived which includes the course book, a PT3 form, and an introductory booklet telling you what you need and advice on how to get there. You have to get your own flights, but hotel is included, as is the bus to the observatory.

The book covers lots of things, from basic telescopes, to equations used in astronomy, use of CCD sensors and how they are applied. Also things like teamwork, working out sources of errors, graphs and a few other bits and pieces.

I'm due there in March, and am quite excited about the whole thing. There is the book to read, some coursework to do beforehand, and a write up to do after. Although Majorca is more or less in the same time zone, I'm expecting jet lag from the shift in daily routine!

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 7

Day 7 and the last breakfast. Some combination of the last few days...

Anyway - off to the final lab. Students doing things to bits of rat tissue. We have a few failures with oxygen electrodes, and I get the chance to see one being rebuilt. Who would have thought cigarette papers had such a use in research!

Lots of mixed results, the end of the week is in site, but the students battle on to get results.

Then lunch - chicken kiev and some more chocolate.

Final summing up lecture, I had out the written assignment to my group - then home! Mixed feelings. It was a great week, but it will be nice to be back to normality in some ways.

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 6

Day 6, and breakfast starts again - 2 sausage and two types of egg. I think that's all the variations tried now.

To the lab - theme 2, energy. We start with the Manduca caterpillar. I'm in charge of the microscope section - having to brief on those. Not too bad - I know how to use a microscope more or less, but then so do the students by this time of the week. I also help with the ion transport experiment as things come back to me.

It goes not too badly, we get some results - which is about par for this experiment.

Lunch then - I settle for sandwich and a big slice of walnut cake.

In the afternoon its the oxygen electrode again! I had a run in with this during plants week. Luckily they are almost the same as I am asked to show the students how to calibrate them. I surprise myself by remembering most of the steps. They can be tricky, but I manage to get through it without too many hitches. Then its into the experiment. There are one or two people waving cyanide filled micro-pipettes around which makes me slightly nervous. However its all pretty successful, despite one or two machines breaking down.

Then - leaving the students to think about an experiment to do tomorrow, we go back for tea (salmon and lemon meringue) and I dash down the hill for a lecture on black holes, although I struggle to stay away all the way through.

Now back to the room, and a shower. Then some vague attempt at initial packing.

Now then, bar then disco? Probably.

So - yes - I went to the disco, yes I danced like someone undergoing electro shock treatment, yes there will probably be an inquiry, and yes there is evidence.... unless I pay

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 5

Day 5 - and the sausages and bacon go with the mushroom - although only 3 of them.

Then off to the lab to do some cardiovascular work.
This involved using various heart rate monitors, blood pressure meters and stethoscopes.
The students planned a lot of their own experiments, from the effect of exercise on BP & pulse, to caffeine intake, to mental stress. Some clever ideas came out of the session.

Lunch was cauliflower and potato bake, and more chocolate stashed.

After lunch, they were given 2 hours to construct a scientific poster, and some very good ones were made.

It was a bit of a panic at the end. Then after they were all finished, I had to go and mark my groups, which was a bit of a responsibility. It took quite a time to read them all and examine.They all passed, and I wrote comments for them.

Then a mad dash back for tea (chicken and chocolate pudding), in rather muggy weather. A shower was needed before I went back to the room to give feedback and forms to the students.

Then back up the hill once more, and to the bar. I bought a disco ticket, and decided to leave earlier as tomorrow could be a late night.

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 4

Breakfast, two sausages, eggs and tomato.

Then off to the lab once more. Today a new theme, which starts with a glucose assay. However two students had forgotten lab coats so I had to run around and find them ones to borrow to start with. All part of the service. The students have to make up 42 different tubes of assay samples - so there is a lot of pipetting going on. The glucose turns a shade of pink - depending on how much there is present.

The group gets some very accurate graphs - not down to my influence I hasten to add. Then its a break for lunch, and a chance to stock up on chocolate. I had the steak, and got 3 bars of chocolate.

After lunch we went on to metabolic rates, where you have to analyse expired air collected in a huge bag thing - called a Douglas bag.

There is a chance to design your own experiments here, and some tried the effect of different exercises, others the effect of hot and cold. Seeing them wrapped in blankets with only noses poking out, or sitting in front of 5 fans was amusing to say the least.

Then to tea - the korma again for me, though it could have been anything I think. The apple pie was nice though. Not that I really need any more food at this point.

Now another set of tutorials to sort out, before the evening finishes, and a "blue parrot soiree" invite for tutors. Slightly nervous!
Well the tutorials went ok I think, I'll have to see. Then some cokes, yes I said cokes, in the bar, as I think I hit the wall on this marathon.

Then to the blue parrot thing - which turned out to be a VERY blue cocktail, looking rather too much like anti-freeze for my tastes, and with a fearsome reputation. Anyway - chatted with a few of the tutors, nibbled some cheese, and then eventually retired.

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 3

Day 3 starts - and I choose the scrambled egg - not very memorable.

Then off to the lab. On the way we have to wander into a copse of trees to grab a sample of lime leaves - some shaded, some in bright sunlight. It's one of the rituals apparently. It's also one of the experiments the students will be doing later.

Getting to the lab, its the leaf disc experiment, and it all goes pretty well - if you exclude the results. They have to subject leaf discs of various plants to radioactive carbon-14 to see how much is taken up by different surfaces and colours of plants.

About 5 different plants were tested including the huge maize plant.

Note the cameo role of the air conditioner next to it - which probably isn't doing it a great deal of good. There is a lot of radioactive marker tape around, and we have to take extra precautions. Special lab coats so as not to spread contamination, gloves and goggles, and a special fume cupboard with lots of admin sheets to account for all the radioactive material.

Most of the results were the exact opposite of what they should have been, oh well - that's science - something I had to say more than once today.

The afternoon brings the presentation skills, and the students have an hour and a half to put together presentations to present to the rest of the group. Then its off to a very large lecture theatre where they get to present them to the group (only 18 people). All very successful. Then a tutor debrief as we prepared to hand over to the next theme.

Then back for tea (pork and various veg, bread and butter pudding).
Then to be with my group as they get introduced to the next theme, and to help out with the poster design workshop.

Then, I think I see the bar in my near future! Oh karaoke.... hum. Its OK - but you can't hear people talk or hold a conversation. Just the one tonight then.

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 2

The first full day in the lab. In truth I'd forgotten a lot of the first experiment, but it all came flooding back once it had been demo'd. Managed to remember most of the details, and by listening carefully to the theme tutor I picked up some useful details to pass on. I felt quite confident at points, then I was put in charge of the cronky old 1970's era centrifuge, and it took a while to get that to go. However it all came out ok, the students got their chloroplast suspensions, and were able to proceed with the experiment.

I got lost finding the coffee bar first time, and nearly led a large group of students to the wrong exit to the cafe. However we got there in the end, a good Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. and I'm up two mars bars on the day!

This afternoon both tutor groups combined to do one bigger experiment on stomatal openings. It went pretty well to, although the actual results were pretty marginal.

Then back for tea (chickeny thing in mushroom sauce & apple pie) after picking up the materials I'll need for tonight's talk.  Then I got talked into a quiz - actually it didn't take much talking. And then after we didn't win, we went back to the bar just in time for last orders, and sat drinking in the garden until late.

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SXR270 Tutor - Day 1

First day as an SXR 270 tutor. Well, no ones run off screaming yet anyway!

So - what was my day like? Well 12:00 a briefing on the course with the other tutors, and a chance to meet all the team.  I knew at least a couple of the other tutors, so that was good. No real surprises at the meeting.

Then off to the labs to go through the equipment - that was OK too. Most of it came back to me eventually. Some of it more quickly than others.

Then off to hear the course directors introduction talk, followed by taking the group up to the lab for introductions. We split the group into two, and I had my 10 students. I then had to do some ice breaking, and a quick talk on keeping a lab book. It all seemed to go OK, although I wasn't sure.

After that its time for tea after the walk back from the medical school - they are building AGAIN! Tea - was a repeat of last Saturdays menu - I turned down the mushroom rice thingy I had last week (risotto I think), and went for the chicken instead.

After that, I had to give a talk on the scientific method and formulating a hypothesis. I seemed to go through the material quite quickly, even though I'd brought along some of my own slides.

Then to the bar - to have some drinks with my group, and a few other friends I knew from previous courses. I decided on an early night at about 10:30 as tiredness is a real possibility, and other nights might not be so easy to sneak away.

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SXR375 - Day 7

The last day :-(
Today no labs - we just have to give presentations. Breakfast - and wonder of wonders - you're allowed 5 items today!!! I only had 4, as I could hardly believe it!

Then we had an hour to tinker with our presentations. Ours was all finished, but I did have one addition. The only person who had published a paper on our plant, I'd sent an email to the previous day, asking him what pigments he'd found. He lives in New Zealand, but even so I thought it worth a shot. He replied in time for me to include his answer in the presentation. So I quickly inserted a slide in to show his thoughts on it. He hadn't found specific pigments, so we were one better than him. Of course he'd found other details that we referenced, so it was a good trade.

Anyway - then me being the computer geek, I took over the lecture theatre computer and got every ones presentations loaded up, in order and ready to go. I also had my handy dandy laser pointer which everyone used for advancing the slides and pointing things out.

The presentations went very well, and we finished in just over two hours. No one really had a problem, despite most people being full of nerves, and it was a really good session.

Then we had a quick last talk in the lab about the ECA and what was required, then back for our last lunch (fish and chips).
Then it was a few good byes and the whole thing was over. Slowly real life starts to fade back in. I went back to my room, because I'm in the same place next week - being a tutor on a different course. I made a start on the ECA (well just the headings - so a good 15 words from the 2500 required!) - hey its a start.
Then - pickup time for a nights sleep in a proper bed, then a similar thing to do next week!

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SXR375 - Day 6

Last day in the labs today. Breakfast first - the usual mix.

Then down to the labs, to complete our last few bits and pieces. We had a go at the full pigment spectroscopy, but with mixed results. We tried a couple of times, really grinding the leaves up hard with abrasive sand, but it always came out as a green colour and the spectroscopy showed a classic chlorophyll curve.

The the tutor gave us another idea, to mix in acid to try and release the attached molecules, and suddenly we got our nearly flat black spectrum that we wanted - hooray! 

Now we had the full story. So we finished off and went up to start work on the presentation.

We broke for lunch with about half of it done (sweet and sour chicken).

Back down to the lab for a quick briefing on what happens next, and we then worked some more on our presentation. Soon had it finished and then we went to try it in the big lecture theatre. 

A few more tweaks, then printed out the slides and went back to write some notes for the talk around the slides.

Tea coming up (lasagne and lemon meringue with ice cream - no soup), then - to disco or not to disco - that is the question?

Well in the end, we sat in the bar, drank and laughed a lot about presentation skills. It was a release I think from the weeks work.

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SXR375 - Day 5

Day five - project start day. We get to do our own thing a bit more now.
Breakfast, and at last the mushrooms make an appearance.

Then down to the lab - and to decide on the project. Our team of three want to investigate the black leaved flowers and see what they contain. We started off with an ambitious three pronged attack, wanting to measure photosynthetic activity of green v. black leaves, the pigments in the black leaves, and whether the flowers had any insect attractants. After a few false starts with the oxygen electrode we decided to leave that bit. It looks a bit fiddly, and our initial tests were a bit difficult to understand.

We go and fetch some fresh leaves and flowers and set to work. We do chlorophyll extraction first, to see if there are extra pigments there. However nothing unusual shows up.

Then we set to work extracting the other pigments. Anthrocyanins and flavinoids.

The pinky one is from the flowers, and the darker red from the leaves. We leave them evaporating and go and get some lunch (chicken fajitas - pretty good i have to say).

The afternoon brings mixed results. We get very poor TLC plates for the pigments - although the flavones come through. We rerun them a number of time but a smear is the best you could describe them as.
We attempt to use the UV spectrophotometer, but it appears to be a cranky old beast and ignores our best attempts. Then we notice that the visible light spectrophotometers dip into the UV a bit, and they are far easier to use in comparison. So we do a few runs of that, and get something we can talk about I think.
In the end - it looks like we have the data to talk a story, but there is one more thing that would help, and I ask Andy about full spectrum of the pigments.
He told us how it can be done, so that's one more thing for tomorrow.
Tea time (mushroom soup - good,  beef steak - ermmm passs, chocolate sponge - not the best ever). Then another two tutorials. One on our upcoming presentation to the group, and then another on our final piece of written work, and where the marks will be.

We were all a little tired now, and trudged back up the hill. The bar called, and most of us answered.

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SXR375 - Day 4

Another day. Another breakfast - much the same as all the others. This 3 items thing does make the plate look a little empty. Anyway - onwards. Its raining again on the walk down to the lab.

We start the lab by doing assays of chlorophyll and protein in the chlamydamonas that we used yesterday. This will help us plot our curves - although really we need a miracle for any curve to come out of ours!

We head for lunch (baked potato with cheese and ham) and then all meet up to go off to a garden, to look at some plants - with the ulterior motive of selecting species to do our projects on. I find some of my black leaved plants in there, which I'm considering doing a pigment analysis on.

After that - its back to the labs for some to finish up assays - collect data and do graphs and things. We do extensive surgery on our graphs - they still look awful, its a very noisy circuit we have so very difficult to pick out data.

Tea - crunchy minestrone soup (interesting idea - not sure it will catch on), chicken korma with rice and nan, and a rather good rhubarb and ginger fool (no not me).
The back to the lab in the pouring rain to discuss the last three days work, and see what data we have for the end of course assessment write up.
Then to the bar, for a light evening avoiding an impromptu quiz.

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