Firstly, the christmas day was a great success enjoyed by everyone. With a majority of 2 to 1, most enjoyed Narnia although there was concern over Mr Tumnus. The dinner went off without a hitch and we all partied long into the night. Photos should be in the gallery shortly.
We are now all planning our last minute shopping, transport to parents houses and cramming in revision for end of semester exams so there is no PsiStar event today.
The next PsiStar event will be next year, probably the 11th January, so watch this space for more information.
We're doing a secret santa at the xmas meal which we'd love all you meal goers to join in with, you don't have to, but if you decide to join in, all you have to do is buy a wrapped non-specific present worth £3 to the meal and you are guaranteed a fantastic gift in return! We'll be swapping at the table so relatively smut-free please. What's that? you want smut? ok, smut if you must.
As many of you are aware, our Christmas event (in all it's glory) is this coming saturday. Thanks to those of you who have signed up already, and if you haven't please do so as soon as possible. The Fat Cats menu will be REMOVED from the noticeboard this wednesday so after that you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SIGN UP. All the information about the meal and events on the day is on the physics noticeboard. We're meeting in the Physics foyer at 1.30pm and carrying on from there.
Additionally, many of us will be going on TED'S PUB CRAWL on friday night, people are meeting at 6.30pm in the foyer and Ted will tell us everything he knows about some fantastic pubs around the Thames.
Just got an email about this today, should be interesting.
To celebrate Einstein Year (World Year of Physics), some of the world's leading physics laboratories are taking part in a 12-hour webcast to show public audiences the excitement of Einstein's life, science and legacy. The programme will be broadcast from locations including CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory and birthplace of the World Wide Web, on December 1st 2005. Audience members will be able to submit questions during discussions with Nobel prize winners, internet pioneers and famous scientists such as Stephen Hawking.
The programme includes subjects such as relativity, gravitational waves, mass and gravity, antimatter, and neutrinos, along with the mysteries left open by Einstein's physics and the technologies derived from it. A global audience will be able to discuss the impact of Einstein' s discoveries and look beyond them with top level physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies, and with physics Nobel laureates David Gross, Murray Gell-Mann and Gerard 't Hooft, connected from the 2005 Solvay physics Conference in Brussels (16:10 GMT).
In addition to CERN, participating institutions include: Imperial College London, the Telecom Future Lab (Venice), the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Chicago), the Exploratorium (San Francisco) hosting scientists from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Bloomfield Science Museum (Jerusalem) and the National Science Education Centre (Taipei).
Watch the live webcast and take part online on Thursday December 1st, 2005 from 11:00 to 23:00 GMT
We have begun organising the Christmas Event, which envolves a cinema trip, a dinner and a party afterwards. Details and updates can be found on our dedicated page as well as the christmas dinner menu.
Let Steve know asap if you want to come to the dinner, we have only 20 places as it's been discounted by the IoP to only £5.95 for two courses, and £8.95 for three. Please sign up at the notice board in Physics or email him with your menu choices.
This Wednesday on the 30th of November PsiStar invites you to come bowling. This will be the second bowling trip of the year following the success of the last one. Meet in the physics foyer at 2.30 pm, the venue is in Canada Water (zone 2) and each game should cost £2.25.
See you all on Wednesday!
Steve 'sarcastic comment quota used up for today' Hudziak
On Monday next, 21 November, Professor Ofer Lahav (UCL) will be speaking on "Dark matter, dark energy, and the accelerating universe".
Ofer Lahav is the Perren Professor at UCL. His research group studies galaxies and cosmology. His main interests are:
* Estimation of cosmological parameters * Reconstruction of redshift surveys * The Cosmic Microwave Background * Clustering and evolution of galaxies * Classification of galaxy spectra and images
The lectures are held at 14.15 in room 112 Physics. Dark matter and dark energy are always interesting topics so this lecture should definatly be worth while attending, not that any others aren't,
Let's all take a moment to offer a big Woop to our very own S*P*A*N*Ker Steve Hudziak who went to the House of Commons this tuesday (15/11/05). He went as part of a Young Physicist Competition and visciously battled 89 other young physicists to present his Ph.D work on iron filled carbon nanotoobs. He made a very nice poster with lots of lovely pictures and although he didn't win he did pretty bloody well to get there and remain standing up despite all the free wine.
Never mind boring department stuff - Check out this funky sh*t! If you weren't at my immense 21st Birthday Bash you too can feel like you were really there by looking at the photos! They're in the gallery and they feature Jo with the horn, Steve doing some gardening and my Mum. Cheers to everyone who came, it would have been immensely dull without you.
On Monday next, 14 November, Dr Neil Mathur will be speaking on "Half-metallic manganites, magnetic domain walls and carbon nanotubes".
Dr Mathur is in the Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge. He will discuss electrical transport between half-metallic manganite electrodes connected by native domain walls and, more exotically, carbon nanotubes. Manganites are mixed-valent oxides of manganese that display interesting physical properties such as electronic phase separation, and metallic phases with almost fully spin polarised conduction electrons.
Native domain walls. In a phase separated manganite film, domain walls may be created in ferromagnetic percolating pathways. Consequently, device magnetoresistance may be qualitatively tuned via device geometry. Intriguingly, the domain walls might display mesoscopic phase separation at the wall centres.
Manganite-carbon nanotube-manganite devices. Ferromagnetic metallic manganite electrodes connected by a carbon nanotube also display magnetoresistance. This demonstrates micron-scale spin coherence in the nanotube, and spin injection between an inorganic half-metallic crystal and the organic molecule.
The lectures are held at 14.15 in room 112 Physics. Sounds like a good way to get back into the swing of things after reading week.
