The final countdown

5.47pm. Had a fantastic afternoon in the lab. We spent the session examining more radioactive sources, taking counts of emissions from the sources at specific energy levels, using a discriminator. This then enabled us to find peaks of output at certain energies, take more detailed measurements around the peaks, and determine ultimately (though this bit comes tomorrow) the energy in those emissions. We also get to plot emissions curves too thanks to a very nifty use of Excel, with an application written for it called 'Gauss Peak Fit'.


Many of the sources have more than one peak, as some radioactive elements decay in more than one way, but for those, we have to decide on subsets of the data to analyse, so that we don't get unexpected results.

When we came to look at these other sources, we had to increase the time slots to take counts from 10 seconds to 30 seconds, so there were lots of periods of 30 seconds of just sitting around and waiting for the count to finish. But how to occupy ourselves for 30 seconds?

One of our more impressive counts.

I had a flash of inspiration though. I took out my phone, went onto YouTube, and found the Countdown theme music. So when Kirsten started the next 30 second timer, I started playback. The whole room erupted with laughter, especially when I pretended to bang the drums beats that happen about five minutes from the end. One of my better moments. It's dreadfully vain to laugh at your own jokes, but I ended up with tears streaming down my face.

There were other funny moments too, firstly when Paul sighed, then Kirsten, and then each of the rest of our quartet did too, and we all did comedy sighs for about a minute. The lab is getting used to the sound of me laughing, and probably think that there is something seriously wrong with me. Mind you, they couldn't exactly criticise me without criticising the others too!

Roy seemed markedly better this afternoon, less of the silent destructive anger. Kirsten told me quietly that apparently a bailiff is being despatched to deliver the papers in person, presumably with the intention of seriously embarrassing Roy in front of his colleagues and friends. That would certainly be one way to do it. I urged Kirsten to make sure Roy talks to the College; they may not take kindly to a bailiff turning up and demanding a student be removed from a lab session, however briefly.

After the lab had finished, we walked slowly together back up the hill. Paul rang his missus and walked off to Elvet to go to his room, and I walked with Roy and Kirsten back to Holgate. They are going to a maths lecture tonight, but I don't think I am going to bother. Kirsten joked that maybe they could just dangle a microphone down to the lecture room, and listen to it in bed instead.

Just about to get changed, freshen up and head over to the dining hall for dinner, which is being served in a couple of minutes. At least I can be a bit more leisurely about it this evening, as I am not planning to go to any optional lectures.

More later, no doubt, as I want to go back and add some photos in to the last few blog entries.