It's been a while but it's worth it... the next event is going to be Wicked...
POSTPONED TILL FURTHER NOTICE: PLEASE STILL REGISTER YOUR INTEREST
We have now confirmed that a theatre trip to see 'Wicked' will take place on Saturday 15th of March at 7.30. Some members and friends of PsiStar will be going out for a bite to eat before hand maybe a drink or two... So if you are interested then just end me your name and phone number along with the same details for any friends that will accompany you. In order to get the best deal and find enough available seats I need the exact number of people before next Wednesday 5th March. If we have 12 or more people we get 50% off tickets and PsiStar will subsidise the cost by an additional £10. We are hoping to get £40 tickets for £10 but if we don't qualify for the 50% discount then we will get £20-£30 tickets (£10-£20 after £10 PsiStar discount).
Additionally I will put a sign-up sheet downstairs in the physics foyer and one more in the student common room located on the 2nd floor. Please put your name and contact details on the sheet.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Girls and Boys, this week PsiStar invites you to dance on ice with the stars! Not celebrities but young physicists twirling around like little quasars or knocking into each other like heavy nuclei just before a supernova, leaving a beautiful nebula of spilt pocket contents. Watch those fingers! The plan; meet in the (almost completed) physics foyer at 2pm this Wednesday 30th, bring a student card, oyster card and monies. We are going to Queensway, zone 1, details here:
http://www.queensiceandbowl.co.uk/ice_skating.php
Cost £9 for students +£1 skate hire.
Steve 'If you smell and breath with a funny noise don't come anywhere near me on a plane, train, bus or in a seminar!' Hudziak
This week we have a very special SemiNar for everyone, our very own King D (aka David Dunstan) will be talking to us about 'Schroedinger's Ammonia', here's a short abstract:
This is not the poison Schroedinger used on his cat; it is, rather, ammonia in the same sort of superposed position as the cat. In chemistry, molecules have spatial shapes, like ball-and-stick models. In physics, they don't. Ammonia appears to be physical at low gas pressure and shows a quantum-mechanical inversion transition which is the basis of the ammonia maser, or microwave laser. At high pressure it loses this transition, appearing therefore to be chemical. I will describe a simple model simulation which shows that this is a classical not quantum effect. In fact, it is an effect that would be shown by a grandfather clock that someone (in a Western bar, perhaps) was randomly shooting in the pendulum. This turns out to be an unexpectedly difficult mathematical problem.
Sounds interesting no? Professor Dunstan is well known in PsiStar for giving some of the best and most memorable talks we have ever had and we really suggest that you don't miss this opportunity. The venue and time/date is room 410, 4th floor physics building at 2pm this Wednesday 23rd. Food and drinks will be provided (as always) for free (to members only).
I hope that by now you are all aware of the dire situation facing the future of particle physics and astronomy in the UK. The STFC have a debt of ~£80M; and the government have decided to deal with this by cutting the UK funding into facililties such as the European Linear Collider and Gemini South as well as cutting fellowships and in some cases withdrawing them all together.
This is unbelievable especially as the same government have a plan to increase the funding over the next three years by £600M to just over £6B.
If you feel this is unacceptable and would like to sign the government-sanctioned petition, sign here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Physics-Funding/
Next week we have a SemiNar, it will be given by Prof. Graham Thompson (Dean of Natural Sciences and all round top bloke!). The title is; 'The Nature of the Forces of Nature', here's an abstract...............
The fundamental forces of nature (Electromagnetism, Gravity, Weak, and Strong Forces) are discussed and explained in an elementary treatment of Quantum Physics and "Exchange Forces" involving virtual particles. This serves as a build up to a description of the (1983) Nobel-prize winning UA1 experiment which discovered the intermediate vector bosons, which are point particles yet with a mass about that of a silver atom.
As usual the SemiNar will take place in room 112 (unless advised otherwise) at 2pm and free food/drink will be available (£1 donation for non-PsiStar members). The date will be next Wednesday 12th December.
There is no event this coming wednesday by the week after - the 14th November is a big one!
We're off to see Avenue Q at the discounted rate of £10 for members and £17:50 for non-members. Places are limited, so sign up in the physics department, give your deposit to Steve, e-mail him and let him know, and you can even join our facebook group event.
As you may all be aware the night of Halloween is fast approaching, a time to celebrate the end of harvest, the beginning of the 'dark half' of the year, the souls of our ancestors, the day of the dead or free sweeties from your neighbours depending on where you're from and what you believe... PsiStar like to think that it is an excuse to dress up as pirates and zombies (maybe zombie pirates or pirate zombies?)
As next Wednesday is Halloween itself, we will be carving pumpkins in the student common room from 2 pm and then off to Genesis Cinema down the road to watch 'Black Sheep', its funny, gory, scary, silly and generally a lot of fun trust me! The film should be starting around 4.15 pm and will cost around £3 for students (that means bring your student ID).
In the mean time try not to get scared!
Steve 'Interesting fact; all the sheep in 'Black Sheep' are white...' Hudziak
This wednesday, the 17th October, there will be a seminar from Dr Theo Kreosis on organic electronics in room 112 in the Physics department starting at 2pm. There will be free food and drink for members (that includes all first year physics students) and for non-members a nominal charge of £1 as food is expensive.
So 17th October at 2pm in 112, Dr K talks on "Organic Electronics"...
The Abstract: Traditional (inorganic) electronics is based on highly crystalline semiconductors and delocalised "Bloch" wavefunctions; in the last twenty years, or so, non traditional organic (i.e. carbon based) electronic materials have been used to fabricate semiconductor devices. An overview of the fundamental processes occurring in organic electronic devices is presented. The role of charge transport in such devices is discussed in detail. This seminar is suitable for non-physicists.
