Christmas Time!! almost...

So yet again my challenge of making a blog post every day for a month has failed... I will at least meet my previous best with this post, so here we go!

So I guess it's not quite allowed yet since it is still November but hey, I'm in a christmassy mood and no one can stop me! I found this wonderful article which considers the different ways that Santa could deliver all those presents to children. Of course we could never presume to think we are as smart as Santa so we will never know for sure but it is still an interesting concept to think about. I was especially impressed by the theory of contracting and expanding space time around you so as to get around the earth in time. However I have to disagree with the assumptions made within the first paragraph as not everybody in the world celebrates Christmas. I also dislike the idea of reindeer burning up due to the heat caused by friction from travelling at extreme speeds...

This is my new favourite Christmas song! They are some new nerdy lyrics to the Christmas wonderland song, theres a backing track on the original website so you can sing along:

Steel balls drop, they're in motion, why they fall, not a notion.

But thanks to New-ton, its all lots of fun, learning in a physics wonderland.

Gone away is the Chem-stry, here to stay is the mys-try.

Dynamics at play, the knowledge will stay, learning in a physics wonderland.

   

In the labroom we will build with LEGO, making cars that run by grav-i-ty.

Accelerating masses, we can time them, and find their vert-i-cal vel-oc-ity.

  

Later on, we will rewrite, to keep our grades from dropping outta sight.

To face unafraid the grades that we made, learning in a physics wonderland!!

  

 I've also changed my mind on Secret Santa presnts! I am about to order this book instead! I'll use the snow at some point... And I made a Brian mask since my family have strong principles on paying postage for internet shopping!

 

Ps Still no news from Oxford...

Santa update

The latest development of Secret Santa is that we picked our names and I bought my present! There was some debate on whether to buy nerdy presents or nice presents. To be completely honest this debate didn't have any controversy in my mind but in the end we struck an agreement that some people would get nice presents and others nerdy ones... Luckily my person said half and half so I'm getting them:

Its a special polymer that expands to 100 times its original size and forms snow. I guess this is more of a chemistry thing but chemistry is based on physics.... and its seasonal! I've also got a cute hot chocolate and reindeer mug set for the nice part - boring I know! But I am considering making my person a Brian Mask.... I love secret Santas!

Interview practise

Today I had a mock interview for Oxford and it was really really really useful! I came home buzzing but then I checked facebook and found out that my friend got a rejection from Oxford and it really brought me back down to earth. I was so sure she would get an interview, I mean she's pretty much perfect for Oxford but her course is really over subscribed and the competition is fierce... I have a pretty good idea of how she is feeling but I'd like to say now to remind myself when I get all depressed about being rejected that this really has been a good experience. Preparing for the entrance exam and getting ready for an interview have all been really useful, worthwhile things. So until then I just have to wait!

So anyway, back to being excited about the mock interview! At first I was totally terrified! I had to walk through this extrodinarily grand private school, I mean it was so posh I felt like I was in Oxford already! By the way, I don't mean posh in a negative way, the people there were really firendly and down to earth, it was just so pretty it felt unreal! And then I walked up some stairs and went into the interviewers office. My heart was pounding and at first I thought i was out of breath from the stairs and I genuinely concerned! But it must just have been nerves I think...

So then the head of Physics came to join us and the questioning began. I'm not naturally a confident person and this was very obvious during the hour! I will try to work on that because I really don't want it to be something that will hold me back. So there were some general questions on my personal statement which was interesting because they picked up on a few things I hadn't thought of such as challenging me over my critical thinking grade and my participation with the gifted and talented scheme I listed.

Then we started the bit that was really good. The Physics teacher asked me if the earth requires 14 million watts to turn, if he were to vapourize me then how long could I keep to world going for. I was incredibly impressed by the question and then even more impressed that I actually found an answer and talk through it.

I also missed ONE WEEK of looking through the news and I had no idea what they were talking about... Seriously, who knew the news was updated so regularly? Anyway, I have quite a few areas of improvement but I feel better that it isn't quite as impossible as I first imagined!

I'm a researcher person!

I found this website in which there are a variety of different projects that you can get involved in. At first I tried to find how stars formed but this was very complicated and I was worried about doing it wrong! So then I tried to look for supernovas which was very easy but also pretty boring! Maybe I'll be a little braver next time.... The first picture is the new image, the middle is an old image and the final is the two subtracted so it shows my supernova!

The Music of Radioactivity

Okay so I just found something totally amazing! I'm still a little bit in awe of it to be honest because it is completely awesome!! There has been a Swedish project in which they have converted the radiation patterns of some isotopes into music. Radiation is a form of energy that is emitted from radioactive substances when they decay to counterbalance energy losses when electrons jump energy shells.

Part of this projects aim is to counterbalance some of the negative press radioactivity has been getting in the press. Of course nuclear disasters are awful, disturbing events that cause extreme suffering but radioactivity is still a fascinating science. Part of the fear of radioactivity is a fear of the unknown. We cannot smell, see or touch it but now we can hear it. Another purpose is to look at the science from a different angle, a position from which I couldn't even have imagined and I think that's brilliant!

An album has been released called the Radioactive Orchestra (feat Axel Boman) and its definitely on my Christmas list! Although it doesn't seem to be available as a physical copy... There are 6 songs on the EP and I think my favourite is three excited Nuclei of Lutetium - 167. There is also this wonderful website which is really really really impressive! It allows you to play around with different radioactive elements and make music of your own and shows you the information of electrons jumping shells and all sorts! You can hear an example in the background of this video:



It seems really relevant to have found this today because in my General Studies lesson earlier we were debating whether arts or science was more deserving of funding and this is a perfect example of where the two intersect!

I found out about it all mostly from this website.

Brian and a crazy biologist and a really good impressionist!

My teacher sent me this link today and its pretty good actually! Its got Professor Brian Cox in it so of course I'm going to like it anyway but even without that I'd like it! Its funny too! Except for a really dodgy joke about Pi and gravytea... And it talks all about the wonderful discovery's made in Manchester which have made me wish that I applied to Manchester now... Its not all about physics either, there was even this crazy biologist who said that 'Biology is harder than Physics, we have equations but there are lots of exceptions which make it more fun'... Crazy guy, equations have to work, I like them to work! Otherwise it's just frustrating!!!

Lego Physics

These booklets are the sweetest things! They use lego to describe and explain some really complicated pieces of Physics and make it incredibly accessible! I wish we had used this in class when I first learnt about it!

So my physics lesson after school was cancelled today so what did I do when I got home? Physics! Heres a picture of some of my creations from the particle physics section!

Each colour represents a different quark so from the left I have a proton, neutron (both baryons as they have 3 quarks) 3 kaons, and 4 pions (mesons as they have 2 quarks)

Jupiter

I really really love the star map app! I was out late last night so while my friend and I were waiting for a lift home I whipped out my phone to see what was around and who would have guessed but the brightest thing in the sky was Jupiter! My friend was really cynical of the app so this morning I googled to check if it was possible and I found this website which was really helpful.

The reason that Jupiter was so bright is partly because this week we can't actually see the moon at night so Jupiter is the brightest thing in our sky. I found it weird at first that I couldn't see the moon at night because I've never really noticed before but it makes sense because of the orbits. The other reasons of course are that Jupiter is so close and so big.

Secret Brian Santa

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah! Just found this, its the perfect Christmas gift for the physics secret Santa!

Woa, two Brian posts in a row, totally not obsessed...

I can draw!!

In class recently we've been drawing quite a few diagrams and I've been getting a lot of stick about my drawing abilities... Its continues outside of lesson time too when in an attempt to draw Charlie Mc Donnell (top left) became more like a picture of Professor Brian Cox (bottom left)... I have no idea how this happened! I'm definitely not obsessed with him... You can see the similarities though right??!

Anyway, so to prove that I can draw this is a diagram that we made to help understand how metal detectors work and I think its pretty good!! I used my erasable pens :)

Stargazing

Now I have a posh phone I can download apps on that too! There aren't as many but I can use them anywhere since I have mobile Internet now! So tonight the weather app told me that it was a clear night (who needs windows?!) so I took my phone outside and I could see so many stars! I used my star map app but the names were so obscure I've already forgotten what they were called.... But the app is so easy to use and the stars were so clear! I've never been able to do stargazing properly before so it was all very exciting!

On the next clear night I'm going to look for some planets! If only it wasn't cloudy now, from the front garden I would be able to see Sirius and Regulus! I wonder if there's a star called Harry Potter too...

Maths Fail Number One....

Yesterday I went to a maths competition run by the further maths network. It was the regional round (which sounds very grand but there have been no previous rounds!) and my teacher had to drive us to a school in Billericay which again meant missing two physics lessons and using the GPS on my new phone to get us there!

It was a team challenge of two year 13's and two year 12's. In the first round we had to share 10 problems between the 4 of us and we had 40 minutes but they were so long and complicated we barely got anything resembling an answer for them all! The second round was a mathematical crossword which was really fun and a little less stressed. We scored quite well in that but it wasn't enough to make up for the monstrosities that occurred in the 3rd relay round! I still cringe when I remember expanding every factorial and ending up with a humongous answer rather than just simplifying in the first place.... Anyway in the end we came 14th out of 19 schools which isn't completely awful I suppose but top 10 would at least have meant we could proudly return to school... We had a teacher supervising us from another school and he said we were lovely so that made it slightly better! I'd rather be stupid and lovely than stupid and not lovely... I did genuinely enjoy the challenge and the cheese, gammon and pickle sandwich so it wasn't a complete waste!

Another Offer!!

I got a conditional offer from Warwick!! Its AAA so I'm really happy because whatever happens now I definitely have 2 universities to have as a firm offer and an insurance choice.

The weirdest thing happened when I got the offer though. I was at school and my Dad text me to say that a letter had arrived in the post fro me from Warwick. So after my driving lesson I rushed to open it but it was just a boring letter from the bank! I was feeling a bit let down and just casually checked my emails and I had gotten an email from track! The emails just tells you that 'something' has changed but they don't tell you what! Thankfully I had already downloaded the track app and logged it so the suspense wasn't too bad! Sure enough there was my offer from Warwick! How on earth did my Dad know? It can't just be a coincidence so I have a good feeling about Warwick!

Nerdy Christmas Shopping

So we are having a secret Santa in my physics class! We haven't picked names or anything yet but since I like being super prepared I'm going to have a shop around now!

The science museum website has to be the place to start I guess!

So this isn't exactly a great present idea but when I have my own house I will have to buy these slat and pepper shakers!

A robobroom! I would buy this for myself but my dog always attacks brooms...Its probably going to be over the price limit too... but look how cute it is!

Okay maybe I should stop falling for things just based on cute factor! But seriously this wind up dynamo is adorkable!

Oh my goodness I will actually have to get this! Its actually funny :0 because of the doppler effect with light? Its for your car, get it?!

Unfortunately these clocks are sold out but they would have been the best present!

I guess if I pick out my teacher I should get her this coaster:

And for my male teacher this tie because he is really adventurous with his tie choice! one day there were even flamingos!


I guess I'll have to do a bit more shopping around before I find the perfect gift...

So these are supermegafoxyawesome!!

I discovered a new app on the Ipad! It is called 'planetary' and it is amazing! It takes a playlist from your music library and turns it into a galaxy! each artist is a sun. around it orbit planets which correspond to the albums. Aound that are the moons which are the various tracks. This is all very pretty and quite exciting but here comes the best bit - the orbit times match the track lengths!!!! It calculates all that super fast and its amazing!

I also downloaded a new Just Dance app. You basically make 4 separate videos and it puts them together into a song. Sorry its such bad quality, I couldn't get it off my ipod so had to improvise but I made this:

Its basically me flicking a nobel prize chocolate coin, rolling a particle physics sided dice, playing iwth a magnet moving thing and blowing a pencil wind turbine but theres music and its all mashed up so its cool!

The News Today 2

I was reading through the BBC website for physics news and found the coolest thing! There is an experiment to recreate the conditions at the centre of the earth! Its as the European Synchrotron Radiation facility. They are using a diamond anvil cell to produce very high pressures by holding samples between the points of two diamonds. There are also lasers to heat the samples and Xrays are used as probes. Lasers and diamonds, a girls favourite things! They provide extremely detailed data and could lead to way to any number of discoveries, for example why the earths magnetic fields can flip.

Also the Fukushima nuclear plant has been opened to reporters and it was really interesting to see what was left after the accident and now they are trying to clean it up. the situation is improving all the time but it is easy to forget that the aftermath continues for people who work there and lived in the area. A large area around the plant is sealed off still and although there are plans for a cold shut down (back to normal pressure and a temperature below 90 degrees Celsius) by the end of the year it might not be completely decommissioned for a decade.

Prize evening

On Friday it was prizegiving so now I properly own my books! Actually on the book front my present kind of failed since I found out she is already reading that book! If she had only waited 41 days....

Afterwards I went to the tea for the teachers and special guests which was at first incredibly awkward but was fine once I found my physics teacher and some past pupils from last year. It was really good to hear their stories from university and especially comforting to know that they have all already made new best friends! Although very amusing to find that one girl had started talking like her new friends and had developed a northern twang!!

It was also quite inspiring to hear my head teacher talking about how whatever path we follow in the future it is the one God intended for us and how he will be with us wherever it lead us. This sounds pretty cheesy now actually... And I suppose it won't stop me worrying about Uni or exams when it comes to it but its a nice thought to keep with me I suppose. Also to hear a past pupil who is now a barrister talking about how her expierneces at our age really helped her in her life was encouraging. I know it was all directed at hall of 500 - 1000 (I'm awful at estimating!) people but it felt specifically for me.

Olympiad

Yesterday I sat the British Physics Olympiad Paper one. They really know how to make these competitions sound totally awesome! Sorry I just finished watching 'a Very Potter Musical' which I watched in a very short period of time so suddenly I've started thinking American... I hadn't done a lot of preparation for the Olympiad so I was feeling a little bit nervous but because it's just for fun I wasn't too worried. It was really hard but it was still really fun! It was just the right level of challenging where you struggle for a bit but it isn't impossible. I'm not sure how I've done because I tried 5 out of 6 questions but I'm not sure I got them right... There may be marks for working out? There was a dimensional analysis question which felt quite cool because you basically make an equation yourself! Plus some things that were similar to the physics aptitude test because Oxford wrote the exam.

Woooooooooooooooooo

Just got a conditional offer from Sussex!! Yay :) Its all coming along now!

I love physics!

So I can't tell if I'm stuck in 'crazy I love physics' mode or if today really was brilliant?! I had three physics lessons and I had so much fun!

So my friends have pretty much decided to buy tickets for the uncaged monkeys, we'll just find someone else to take my ticket if I can't at least maybe I make it! this way it seems like the interview/no interview is a win win situation!

Then I had a physics lesson in which we were talking about simple harmonic motion. I asked if humans have a natural frequency and then we took an interesting turn off topic in which we dicussed stomachs exploding at discos... Basicly when a certain frequency of sound is applied a certain object will vibrate in a way called resonance. A different object will have a different frequency so our bodies will have a frequency at which they will vibrate.

Then with my other teacher we have been doing magnetic fields and today started talking about transformers. This uses AC currents it is incredibly clever so I thought that Nikola Tesla had probably invented it. I checked, he did! It's a bit complicated so I'm not sure I can explain it but it uses the laws of induction. Now I understand how the tesla coil works (basically a transforming to very high voltages) and it is brilliant! This is a video clips from a film using the tesla coils, please excuse the cheesy romance plot line!!

The News Today

I don't think I ever told you but this is a really good website! It has a new space picture a day with an explanation which is pretty cool because they are just so beautiful. I don't think I'm really a space physicist, I just seem to like pretty things...

So many people have told me that I need to start following physics in the news so I don't really have any excuse for my laziness anymore... So I'll be reading the physics world app on my Ipod more and listening to these every Thursday... And so far (this evening...) this is has been pretty successful! I have learnt about the European mission to the moon, and why the UK want to be involved but how we might not be able to because it would probably cost us more than 20 million euros so we're trying to decide if there are better places to spend the money.

Even cooler than that is the Chinese space station! Well, it isn't a space station yet but they are developing it and they managed to send up a shuttle, land it, orbit with it and then they will bring it back in 12 days. That's pretty cool but the coolest thing was that there is a co-operation between Germany and China called Simbox which involves taking plants into space to observe the cells at under zero gravity conditions. They think it could lead to a cure for cancer which of course would be amazing in itself but I also find it incredible that space exploration has so many implications. I also found it really interesting to see how political issues affect space exploration in regards to the alliances made because the USA won't work with China at the moment, even though they are both so successful. Oh, and there was a pretty video at the end!

There is going to be a vote in January at the World Radio Conference of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva about whether they should abolish or keep the leap second. Basically every few years (not exactly, it has to be calculated when it will be every time) our clocks are about a second behind the earths rotation so all the clocks are pushed forward a second (well all the important clocks!). Some people want to abolish it because it's a hassle to correct but others (e.g. the UK) want to keep it because it has implications for the future (a second seems very small but over several hundred years its an hour) but whatever they decide everyone will have to do it. Can't believe I had never heard of a leap second before! I don't want to miss the next one but they can't work it out yet (usually 6 months notice) so I guess I'll just have to check this site around July time...

The Uncaged Monkeys!

Brian has another run of physics gigs! The Uncaged Mokeys (Professor Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh and Robert Ince) had a few shows in the summer too but it was during the exam period so there was no way I could go so today when my Dad told me that there were some new dates available this December I got a little excited! It's called a night of 200 Billion Stars and the website says 'prepare to be amazed'! It's going to be great!!

At least it would be if the only dates weren't the 13th and 14th of December... I can't make it... Thats the only two dates of Physics interveiws for Oxford! I don't even know if I will be called to interview but I have to keep the date free even though it seems more likely that I will be free those night! It's so sad... I'm sure this cannot be an accident, really what are the chances?!

Another Clear Out

Since I decided which universities I wanted to go to I decided to get rid of all the other prospectus' I had piled up in my room. I also had quite a collection of leaflets picked up at open days and letters that had come through the post. The University of Leicester definitely won the award for the sending me the highest number of letters!

I went through cutting out interesting pictures and articles from them all and found a few things to add to my wall as well as a few blog ideas! To be honest I have no idea what most of the pictures are but they are on my list of things to discover!

Clerk Maxwell

I found a couple of articles on Maxwell in some magazines from Kings college that were particularly interesting because he is incredibly famous but I'm embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what he had done. Early this year I did a presentation in class about cameras and I got really excited about how cameras produce coloured pictures because its so clever! The picture is taken through 3 different filters (red, green and blue), there are several methods to achieve this, and the intensity of light through each is combined to make the colours. Maxwell developed this, it was his idea! He also discovered that light is a part of the electromagnetism which was quite revolutionary.

Time

It was my birthday yesterday! (well it was when I started this post!) So I'm officially an adult now which feels very odd when I think about it but then again I've been going through the whole maturity thing anyway because of this being the last year of school. I've never been so old before!

My friend bought me a time turner for my birthday and it is just the coolest gift ever! It is from the Harry Potter series and was used by a main character to go back in time so that she could do all of her lessons. It seems perfect and even though its half term, I still find myself wishing it could really work, there's never enough time!

Time travel definitely comes under physics territory so I started some research!

Firstly there is a cheats time travel using the theory of relativity. I first came across this at a course in Nottingham but I don't remember much about it because I was in a state of shock for a couple hours after I found out that time isn't constant. And then they had an experiment on bang goes the theory. Jem Stansfield took a very very precise clock and went on a very very fast aeroplane around the world. Because time goes slower when you travel faster Jem's clock was a fraction of a second behind an identical clock on the earth. I don't count this as time travel really because its on such a small scale even though it is the most realistic method!

I have just discovered gravitational time dilation. This is amazing because apparently gravity doesn't just pull space, it also pulls time :0:0!! Black holes are very heavy and so have the strongest gravitational pull so if you could orbit around one without falling in and time would pass approximately half the time on earth.

And then when people say that looking into the night sky is the same as looking into the past because the light has taken time to reach us its true but it still doesn't meet my idea of time travel...

A Kerr black hole is a theoretical idea of a rotating black hole and the centripetal force in this black hole would prevent it from having an infinite gravitational force at its centre like normal black holes. Therefore you could pass through it without being spagetified. And then there is some speculation (I'm not sure how realistic it is) that you could pass through the black hole and exit a white hole and who knows wheere that would be!

The next possibilty would be an Eistein-Rosen bridge, also known as a wormhole. This is a result of a combinations of curvatures of space time due to a group of very large mass such as blackholes. The tunnels created could transport you accross time and spcae, however they would be very unstable so would probably collapse before you made it through or you could artificially enhance the tunnel but run the risk of a radiation feedback destroying the tunnel...

I suppose nothing is ever going to compare with the practicallity of a TARDIS... There are several problems with time travel because it creates so many paradoxs which makes many scientists discount it as impossible but surely if it happens in Harry Potter it has to be possible?!

Flatland

I just finished reading 'Flatland: a romance of many dimensions' and I really enjoyed it although having romance in the title is incredibly misleading! It is even more brilliant when you consider it was written in the 19th century and displays such imagination. I'll confess that it took a couple of chapters to get used the style and really immerse myself in the world but after that it was brilliant. I can see why on the back of the book they struggled to categorise the book as either mathematical of scientific as it really has implications for both. I thought I understood the book and then in the next chapter the hexagonal grandson in the 2 dimensional world asked why 3 to the power of 3 didn't work in geometry, its such a simply thought and yet one that had never occurred to me, what are the mathematical implications of 3 to the 4...

The last couple of days

I'm getting into some awful blog habits! Firstly I've become a sort of mind blogger so instead of posting on here I just post in my head and then if I only keep things in my head they get lost forever! Blogging has also slipped down my list of things to do, so much so that it rarely even makes the shortlist nowadays. I have several half written drafts waiting to be finished but I don't think I can ever just stop writing completely...

So the point of this post is to break a trend and write on a weekday! And also because I've had the weirdest couple of days!

Yesterday morning was the Physics aptitude test and I don't feel too brilliant about how I did to be honest... But then it was supposed to be difficult and it was so maybe thats the only way it could be. And honestly it was exciting not to know what to do and to have to try and figure it out! It just wasnt quite as fun when I couldn't...

Then I went to Ilford in the afternoon for a session with an oxford recruitment employee. We only found out about it the day before so it all felt a bit crazy! But we got there in the end, with the use of the GPS on my phone. Actually I havent said yet (welll I have talked about it a lot in real life...) but I got a new phone for my birthday and I absolutely love it! Firstly GPS is a-maz-ing!! It's so impressive, and slightly scary, that my phone can find my location so fast and then give me directions to wherever I want to go, track my location and change the route in real time. Wow... I'll research how it works later, I haven't finished going through the day yet! The session was quite good. I was expecting a mock interview or to be given some practical tips but I suppose that was asking for too much really. However it was very reassuring and dispelled some of the rumours I had heard and although it all seems a little premature as none of us have even been called to interveiw yet it is quite comforting to do something to prepare.

And then I went to a Jessie J concert!!! It was a birthday present from my cousin since I turned 18 last week, I have half a post about that waiting to be finished... And I know what your thinking, your thinking 'oh my goodness Jessie J has nothing to do with Physics!' but I'm afraid you're wrong! Actually I've thought this through and have two links. Firstly the pyrotechnics were amazing! There were lights everywhere, smoke machines, fireworks, confetti and balloons. Maybe I'll reaserch that all a bit more later... And secondly, just before one of the songs Jessie had this whole speech about following your dreams and not changing who you are so I decided I'm a physicist and thats what I'll be, nerdy quirks in awkward social situations and all!

So then today was hard work since I never go out on a school night, let alone to a concert getting back at midnight! But I managed to get through it without collapsing on the floor dramatically with my hand stretched out, using my last breath to beg for coffee so I'm feeling a little more confident about how welll I can deal with sleep deprivation during the uni years!

I got the 2 most recent issues of the Physics review at lunch so I spent my next free reading though them which was really fun actually! There were a few bits about things we had done in class which were nice because it made me feel smart that I knew what they were talking about! And then There was an article about Nikola tesla on the back page which of course I found extremely interesting!  There was also an article about physics blogs (I've got to confess to having a mini daydream involving my blog being written about in a magazine...) and they recommended this blog which I've just read through a few posts from and it is really brilliant! Its pitched at the perfect level and is about physics in the news which is always great! I've also learnt why spherical icecubes are the best which I think will come in handy as an icebreaker at some kind of social science event!

Then this evening when I got home there was a letter waiting for me. It was from Nottingham and had a first class stamp on it so I ripped it open and was hugely relieved to find a letter saying that they would like to offer me a place and will have an informal meeting with me in January to decide what the conditions of my offer will be! I hadn't relised quite how much the worry of having no offers was weighing down on me but I feel so much lighter now!

Now I'm going to get ready and go to bed because I really can't run the risk of causing a coffee induced scene tomorrow as well! It's a shame though becasue my lava lamp only just warmed up properly... Goodnight!