Wall News

I hadn't noticed how much my wall had grown until I tried to take a picture of it and had to do it in 2 parts! So there it is (to the left)! I managed to get Nikola in there as a last minute add in because the printing went a bit weird to make the top trumps! I think it was fate...

At the bottom you can just about see a picture of Saturn I got from Imperial. It is actually entitled 'Saturn and our pale blue orb' but me being the idiot I am I only understood what this meant yesterday when they explained it at Queen Mary! This is it closer:

Can you see the small dot in Saturn's rings? That's the earth!!

It was taken by the Cassini space shuttle which actually only has a camera with 1mega pixel! I find it remarkable that our mobile phones have a better camera than a space shuttle! Its because the shuttle was built in the 80's.

My human genome board has taken a few additions too!

There is a penguin magnet I got from the Royal Society Summer Exhibition which is a symbol in particle Physics because a professor lost a bet with some students which meant that he had to fit the word 'penguin' into his next paper! There is also a sign saying 'please stop mutating my DNA' because my genes kept mysteriously rearranging themselves!

The Wait Is Over!

They arrived!! I ordered a free set of human genome magnets from the open university a while back and today they finally arrived! I may have written a post a little while ago about how frustrating my wait was... There was a pile of post this morning and I just knew they would be there! Granted I have had the some feeling every day for the last 3 weeks or so but this time I was right!! So shockingly, it wasn't a conspiracy after all!

It was really fun pairing them up and putting them in size order - I know that sounds really strange but maybe it was because I had waited so long or because compared to revision everything is 10 times more fun or maybe because I've pretty much always enjoyed ordering things? It was so great it didn't even seem like biology! Oh wait, am I supposed to be nice about biology now? Oh, that's going to be hard... Just kidding! Kind of...

So next time my parents moan at me for not liking lemon and mushroom soup or risotto with olives as big as your face (maybe slightly exaggerated...) I can say 'it's not my fault, it's my chromozome 1...' (am I allowed to say that?! I have no idea...)

Ps. The spare Y chromosome is holding up the paper explanations of what each chromosome is, don't worry!

Waiting Waiting

You may remember I wrote this post years ago.

So I'm still waiting for my Human Genomes? Where are they?! I ordered twice just incase I did it wrong the first time. I sent the link to a friend, she ordered them maybe an hour after me and she got hers after a couple of days?!

Maybe they found out that I occasionally enter Physics vs Biology debates, and may possibly have developed arguments outlining the loserness of Biology in the face of sheer awesome Physics and they think that I don't deserve them?

I should probably have given up hope on them ever arriving but still every time my parents say, 'something came for you' I feel my hopes soar only to be faced with the bitter dissappiontment of yet another university prospectus to add to my pile...

You want to know what makes it even worse? My friend made this post saying how great they were! I'm so jelous!

I may even have resorted to singing along to 'Mr. Postman' by the Carpenters and changing the lyrics to 'Please, Mr Postman, look and see, if theres human genomes in your bag for me. oh yeaaaaa'. I am a bad singer. Please arrive soon - my families ears are at stake here!

X-ray machine in my wardrobe

Physics revision somehow wound up with me on the 'bang goes the theory' website on the BBC.. It's kind of on topic so it doesn't totally count as procrastination right?
Anyway I found this: http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/biology/order-your-free-set-genome-fridge-magnets which is super cool - I can't wait for mine to arrive!

So then I started looking for free physics stuff and I ended up on an article describing how sellotape can cause x- rays! If you slowly undo sellotape in the dark you see a fluorescent blue glow! So guess who ended up inside a wardrobe because she couldn't wait for night? Yea, that might've been me.. but guess who ended up slightly entangled and bitterly disappointed, three times? Also me... I might've been doing it wrong but I'm pretty sure there aren't many ways of peeling off sellotape... I had to give up after three times because I was getting tired of rewinding sellotape! I had never mind, I'll try again with another roll - I'm used to Physics experiments not working!

Anyway this is what is actually happening when you unroll sellotape (in a wardrobe or out of a wardrobe...). The adhesive becomes positively charged and the rest of the rolll is negatively charged. You transfer energy to the charge when you pull it away. The negative charge will be attracted to the positively charged adhesive and will move through the air towards it. It transfers the energy to the air and the air molecules glow! An American researcher, Carlos Camara, did this experiment in a vacuum (I'm pretty sure I must have one of those somewhere in my wardrobe..) and produced x-rays powerful enough to take an x-ray image of a hand!! I watched a youtube video of this and it literally was just a normal roll of sellotape!

Needless to say - I have a new favourite website! I want to say I'll try a new experiment everyday but I'm not sure i can cope with daily disappointments!! I'll try everyday till one works?!

Ps. it wasn't the wardrobe with Brian in ;)