Ginger_Chris

I don't. I just do what seems easiest at the time and go with the flow of that.

I guess I'm not the only one that has walked into a new building and though "this would be really easy to defend from zombies". A perfect example is Wadham college. Not only does it have a strong perimeter with re-enforced lower windows, it has a maze of underground service tunnels connecting parts of the buildings which are perfect defensive hold points. And battlements Infact most of the oxford colleges are pretty good from a defensive point of view. There's also a local shop selling swords and knives and guns which would be my first port of call in Armageddon. - as well as a few supermarkets for rations.

That did depress me, I though I'd scored pretty low until you came along. Cheers. PS. I scored 6

Lionhead would be amazing. Black and white wii would be fantastic (given the right level of polish etc)

Pics of my dog. Ellie. She's a bit bigger now but still as cute. Alsation cross staffy, nicest dog ever.

No it's worse, I have to write essays and do social science. The lack of fact and peer review is killing me. Cheers for the offer. It's a literacy review unfortunately, so lots of reading and social science "research". Its just to go towards my dissertation (another pointless exercise - why bother doing a study when it's only relevant to one school?). Hopefully it might help me get a job in a 'better' school. Hopefully. Sigh.

I would but I have 5000 words to write for tomorrow. Work over Christmas should be banned. PS its about Gifted and talented education if anyone is interested in offering :P

great film. really depressing, but amazing.

yea happy new year! I'll go back to writing my essay now. stupid work hogging all the fun time.

Supergrunch - GO, and hard maths

I'm in Oxford practically by myself. I might watch TV or summats. Might start packing as I'm leaving for tomorrow. Not that I'll need much for 4 days.

£30 in notes £12.38 in change Halifax debit card Halifax instant saver card 2 BOD cards, one for undergrad and one postgrad (valid for different colleges) 10 first class stamps orange top up card OUDS membership card game reward card donor card NI card European health insurance card School ID Small credit card thing with fundamental constants on. Lottery ticket 1 month bus pass (valid for oxfordshire) Young persons railcard 2 train tickets (oxford-scunthorpe, scunthorpe-oxford first class) Random foreign money: 25c coin (Netherlands) 2 * 1G coin (Netherlands) quarter (American) 50 Groszy coin (poland) 350 Korun (Slovenian) 50 Koruna (Czech republic) 10 euro 20 Kuna (Croatia) 1 dollar (Jamaican) 20 zloty (Poland)

I usually get rid of them by taking a sip or usual drink of water/other liquid. I never understood why other people have to do all this crazy stuff to get rid of them.

Worst day: Christmas Day 2004 About a week earlier I developed the symptoms of mumps, and over the week I'd gone through the who swelled face thing. The worse thing about mumps is that not only does it hurt to eat (really bad), it also hurts to think about eating because it stimulates your swollen slavia glands. As you can guess, because I was hungry alot (eating=pain even over 3 types of painkiller)and I was surrounded by sugary goodness it hurt constantly. (I lost over a stone in a week) Anyway, by christmas day the swelling was starting to go down and I was down to 2 types of painkiller, and I was looking forward to going to annual family gathering at my grans to have a huge christmas dinner. I wake up about 10am, knowing that my sister and family will already be downstairs having opened her presents REALLY early. I get downstairs, no one there. I look around the house and can't find anyone and the car is gone. I found a note attached to the microwave informing me they'd left without me, fearing I might infect people there. while technically true, they might have informed me of this plan earlier. The note also said they've left me a microwaveable christmas dinner in the freezer. So yea, I spent that christmas opening my presents with my dog and two cats. All of which were more interested in stealing some of my rubbery turkey from the microwavable dinner, while I sat in agony eating it. Knowing all the time my family were eating all this lovely food and having fun. T'was bollocks

1 Do you play videogames? Yes 2 In your own words, please describe your definition of a 'gamer' [open] Someone who plays computer games fairly regularly. They own a a console or a pc and several games, usually of different genres. They have a decent knowledge of games, past present and future titles. They usually play more than one game, and have an appreciation of good games (not necessarily those which are popular). They are probably people who would consider calling good game making an art form and put gameplay over graphics when describing games to friends. 3 Would you consider yourself any of the following: [multi] - Hardcore gamer - Casual gamer - Console gamer [only playing games consoles as opposed to using a PC] - Handheld gamer [only playing handheld consoles like the Game Boy] - PC gamer - Competitive gamer - Retro gamer [only playing games/consoles deemed 'retro'] - Import gamer [importing games from Japan/America] - Power gamer [mix of competitive and hardcore] - Cyberathelete [playing for money] 4 Describe your use of videogames? [multi] - Recreational - Relaxation - Escapism - Just for the sake of it - Social interaction - Social activity - Competition 5 How much time do you spend playing video games? - Less than an hour a day - 1-2 hours - 3-4 hours - 5+ - Once a week - Once a fortnight - Once a month 6 What is/are your preferred genre/s? [multi] - Adventure - FPS - RTS - RPG - Puzzle - Platformers - Multiplayer games - MMORPG - Sports - Racing - Simulation - Fighting - Fantasy - Sci-fi - Party games - Music - Other [specify] 7 Where do you mainly play videogames? My room (console or pc), friends house. [open] 8 What consoles do you own? - Microsoft Xbox - Microsoft Xbox 360 - Nintendo Wii - Nintendo DS - Nintendo Gamecube - Sony Playstation 2 - Sony Playstation 3 - Sony PSP - PC - Other [specify] 9 Do you engage in other forms of media, if so what are they? [multi] - TV - Film - Books - I don't - Other [specify] 10 What is/are your preferred genre/s? [multi] - Action adventure - Sci-fi - Fantasy - Historical - Religious - Horror / Thriller - Classical - Documentary - Reality - Comedy - Entertainment - Crime / Detective - Mystery - Other [specify] 11 Are you male or female? [M/F] 12 How old are you? 10-16 17-21 22-30 30+ 13 What is your ethnic background? - CaucasiAn - Black / African American - Mixed race - Asian - Other [please specify]

Dancing shoes. Mainly because most of my nights out are with my friends from dancesports, and well, we like dancing. My actual dancing shoes :P

Flipz were the greatest snack food ever made. For some reason they got discontinued in the UK (even though everyone I knew ate at least a pack a day). I'm really tempted to order loads from America.

I think I might stick with my trusty gamecube controller, or a classic controller if I ever get one. I don't know the wiimote options just don't look that good, especially the wiimote on its own. That looks well hard to use.

My copy arrived this morning. I have 3000 words to write by Friday so I can't play it. Dammit.

Dark matter and dark energy are basically an unproven theory to try and explain why our formula formula to explain the universe doesn't fit what we're actually seeing, in fact its not very close at all. It's a guess, and they're trying to find the properties of it to see if they can prove it exists or not. Blue_ninga: That's antimatter, seen all the time in the form of positrons in Beta+ decay.

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is the photons that last interacted with something during 'decoupling'. Before decoupling, the mean free path of light was tiny (ie it bumped into stuff every few centimeters), and electrons had so much energy they didn't orbit protons. It was a hot dense gloopy mess of photons, electrons and neutrons, and everything was the same temperature because they bumped into each other so often. As this expanded it cooled. When it reached 3000K (still hot by our standards), the electrons started orbiting protons, and so light stopped scattering off all the free electrons. This happened about 400,000 years after the big bang. Its called decoupling because it's when matter and energy were no longer in thermal equilibrium (the same temperature). The CMB we observe are the photons that last interacted with an particle all that time ago (about 13.6 billion years ago) and has been travelling ever since. During that time, space itself has expanded causing the wavelength of the photons to increase and correspond to a temperature of 2.725K, rather than the initial 3000K (the photon kinda got stretched out as space expanded so it looks less energetic that it originally was).

Last time I did a dissection: Pupil: "Sir, isn't blood poisonous" Me: "Yes. Yes it is" Pupil: *runs over to sink and starts scrubbing her hands vigorously* When will they start teaching children sarcasm as part of the curriculum? Still isn't clear that they slowed the pulse of the actual photons. Silly physicists. I'm not that shocked actually, if I could have chosen a different degree i would have liked to have done zoology or evolutionary biology. Might have been a bit to much stats for my liking though, but i know where your coming from.

No you're right. I'm slightly wrong (possibly completely wrong depending on my understanding of those papers) I did a bit of digging around. this is the website of the group that did it with a bunch of publications about it on. Several of those articles are talking about group velocity rather than photon velocity (the whole phase vs group velocity thing again). Even if it is group velocity they are slowing, its dead useful for sending information and computing, but from those articles it seems the actual photons are still moving at a decentish proportion of the speed of light, just the light pulse as a whole is very slow. I think. Have a look through those supergrunch, there's a few actual papers in the bunch, maybe you'll be able to decipher a little more from them than I could. (personally i think they deliberately write most papers just to sound clever. Thank god for articles) Oh and the whole group vs phase velocity, I found a nice little java applet.

light travels at the same speed as it usually does, very close to c (as BEC's have to made in a high vacuum). The special thing about them is that the wavefunctions of individual atoms overlap to such a degree that they become indistinguishable. Basically what you get is 10^6 or 10^7 atoms acting like a single wavefunction, one giant particle. Its really weird because you can split this blob and then get it to interfere with itself. Seeing patterns of interference with a few million rubidium nuclei is a little strange. These guys do alot of research and were the first to produce a BEC in a lab. http://cua.mit.edu/ketterle_group/ (the picture gallery has lots of nice images and Wolfgang Ketterle has written a few really nice introductory papers on the subject)

Oh that I can do, The basic basic experiment Young's slits, except passing photons through, you pass electrons. If you choose the right size slits you'll observe an interference pattern very similar to that of light (except with a wavelength corresponding to that on a electron of whatever energy you give it). If you slow the rate the beam of electrons is emitted so that only one electron is passing through the slits at a time, eventually you'll still get an interference pattern. This is because in quantum mechanics the resultant intensity is equal to the probability of all routes to that point. The electron therefore will pass through both slits (as its described as a quantum wavefunction and both slits are equally likely a path) and interfere with itself. The point where the observer interferes is when the observer puts equipment on one of the slits so that they can determine which slit the electron passed through. By taking a measurement you force the electron to pass through one or the other slit, rather than both. You will no longer measure an interference pattern because you know the path the electron has taken, so it can't go through both and interfere with itself. Other examples include measuring individual atoms. Heisenberg uncertainty principle is an example. to measure the position of a electron you have to hit it with an photon, which will affect its position and momentum. I studied bose-einstien condensates for a while, which involve ultra low (nanokelvin) temperature atoms. If you took "photographs" of them in a traditional sense by bombarding them with photons, you'd heat them and completely ruin the experiment. The simple fact is when you observe something you have to interact with it in some way, and that will affect the outcome. This is even more prevalent in quantum mechanics where taking a measurement forces the particle into one quantum state, rather than a superposition, which can completly disrupt the results of the experiment. NB If this doesnt make much sense, I'm a tad tipsy, feel free to PM me if you want anything clearing up/more examples.