Break for lunch

12.49pm. After coffee we finished off the radio part of the lab experiment. Andy and Tony were first to get their radios completed and working, Andy seems very adept at soldering. I gather he's an engineer but I don't know what his field is.

Kirsten, ever one for a competition, managed to win the prize for the best radio. Not only did she have a fully working radio, an achivement in itself, but very enterprisingly she made a case for it from cardboard and tape, and even attached a carry handle removed from a camera. Her prize was a badge saying "I oscillated with David and Paul" (that is, David Keen and his lab assistant Paul), and the Hertz Trophy, which turned out to be a plastic cup with a printed label stuck on it.

After finishing off, we moved to our next lab, the Compton scattering experiment. We had a good briefing to start with, the tutor is quite energetic. English is not her first language, I suspect it's something eastern European, but her command of the language is powerful and impressive.

After a lengthy section on safety, as we are handling quite strong radioactive sources today, she ran through the experiment that Arthur Compton did, which gained him the Nobel prize, and then we were able to make a quick start.

Danger! Danger! Radiation!

I'm working with Kirsten today, and Roy is working with Paul. Kirsten and Roy disappeared for about 15 minutes just after the briefing, and I was starting to feel a little miffed. But when they came back looking very solemn, it was clear that something bad had happened. She didn't want others to overhear, so she scribbled in her notepad that Roy is being served with a restraining order by his soon-to-be ex-wife.
"When?"
"Tomorrow."
Open mouthed, I asked, "where?"
"At college," she replied simply.

From what Kirsten has told me, it appears that the estranged wife is moving house, and doesn't want to tell Roy where she is moving to. Kirsten also suspects that she is trying to deny him access to his children. So much for keeping things amicable. Roy is obviously deeply upset by this, and the change in his behaviour is marked. He is silent and impassive, which for a character who is normally larger than life, it is unsettling.