“SIIIIIILLLEEEENTTT NIIIIIGGGHHHT. HOOOOOOOLLLLLYYYYY NIIIIIIGGGHHHTTT.”

Picture the scene: 60 people on each side of the dance floor, some lolling about on chairs, some standing triumphantly. Suits and dresses are the attire, glasses of wine are in hand and Christmas hats sit atop heads. A bemused looking DJ watches as each group takes turns to shriek lines from a Christmas Carol at the other in a battle to be the loudest. It’s a carol sing off. Cover your ears! It must be the annual Holbein and Willis Jackson Hall Christmas Dinner!

Each year the Holiday Inn that towers over Kensington (which is less tacky than it sounds) greets a large group of students from my halls of residence, all keen to engorge themselves on as much Christmas food and wine as possible. A buffet was the order of the day. This catered perfectly for a range of needs: from those few who wished to eloquently enjoy a small plate of food to my rugby playing friend Sean who, like a good scientist, wished to investigate just how much protein and carbohydrate one can fit on a plate (he repeated this experiment several times).

Some were clearly a little tired.

Dinner was followed by games and awards. A joke telling competition was predictably varied: There were hall seniors joking about one another (what’s the difference between * hall senior name* and a brick? A brick gets laid. Ho ho ho.) that were received with good spirits and a middle finger, and one extremely long joke that had such a ridiculous punch line no-one quite realised it had hit. Awards included best dressed male/female, worst cook, messiest room… There were suitable awards for each.

After the carol singing competition ended the games (I think nothing could quite top the sheer absurdity of it) the dance floor was hit with aplomb.  People drunkenly hugged at the end; one person managing to pull a small group to the floor with his overzealous cuddle. Overall a good time was had by all, and several carols were massacred.

-          Reuben

The other hall seniors and I pose for a photo - December 2011

That crazy bunch at MIT have been busy. They’ve made a camera with a shutter speed so quick it can be used to see a single light pulse from a laser travelling through a medium. They’ve used their camera to “film” a light pulse travelling through a bottle. All is explained below:

Now they just have to work out a way to make the videos cat related and they’ll have an internet sensation on their hands.

I remember when we were planning for A-Level projects at sixth form: one chap in the class came in with a grand plan to try and measure the speed of light by filming a torch being switched on in front of a ruler, then go through the  video frame by frame to watch the light… When asking if it would work, the teacher and I simultaneously said “no”. If only we had seen this setup and the chap had a ton of cash to hand, we wouldn’t have been quite so quick to suggest he think of something else. One must keep an open mind at all times…

-Reuben

(found via Engadget)

I was very nearly on the BBC News at 6 Oclock today.

There are some moments where it becomes clear just how lucky I am to be studying at somewhere like imperial. If you’ve been keeping up with the news you might have heard that there was a big announcement from the Large Hadron Collider (one must keep the d and r in the correct order…) about the Higgs Boson*.

All day people around the physics department could be heard discussing the possible news. This was helped by an email sent around to all physics undergraduates:

“FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

My friend Tim doing his best "This is very interesting" face for the BBC.

The BBC are filming the Higgs Boson update between 1 and 3pm today, Lecture Theatre 3, so pop along if you are interested.”

A live stream of the announcement (it turned out to be more of a lecture) was to be shown and the BBC would watch our interested smiling faces taking in the wonderful discoveries.

The hall was packed.

There were a few technical hitches at the beginning as the video kept stopping. It became apparent that this was CERN’s fault, as someone announced that “Fermilab are having the same problem” – seemingly keeping in instant message contact with their US colleagues.

Eventually a person with a skype feed came down and plugged in their laptop, letting the eager crowd take in what was going on.

Unfortunately the sound quality meant we couldn’t really tell what was being said, but the slides gave us enough information to work out that the ATLAS experiment had nearly discovered the Higgs Boson (with 2σ – that’s 95.4% – certainty that it wasn’t just statistical fluke).

Klaus looking like he's not paying any attention to proceedings (he was apparently following what was going on with his laptop) - as seen on TV.

Satisfied that we had been sufficiently filmed and that ATLAS had done a pretty good job, we left before the second half of the announcement (from the other experiment looking for the Higgs – CMS – it’s results turned out to be pretty similar) to go be manly and hit the gym. Unfortunately the BBC elected to use footage from after we had left, hence not quite being on the news. My friend Klaus could be seen however; staring at his laptop, clearly in a world of his own.

Still, the excited atmosphere (there were plenty of high energy physicist who work on the experiments present) was great to be part of and the announcements interesting. Only at Imperial eh?

Ah, what a big a geek this all makes me, but why not? I’m studying physics, I might as well embrace it. One of the lovely things about being here is that if you want to be geeky about something, you can, and others will probably join in. And if you don’t, almost everyone is pretty nice and most defy stereotypes about social interaction ability.

Other news:

In other news, the Hall’s Cold War themed Christmas party will be getting in the way of me finishing an essay (due friday) this evening, I’m singing in the Imperial College carol concert on Wednesday and I am no longer ill. I’m Thoroughly looking forward to going back home on Saturday to see all the lovely people there.

Reuben rant:

*I really wish that the media would stop calling it the “God particle” without any proper clarification. It’s a name that has the potential to suggest to the uninitiated that this Particle Physics theory has something to do with God and religion.  As ever in physics, it has nothing to do with either. The name “The God Particle” might be seen as a bit of a joke among physicists, but anything that has the potential to add to the false perception of divisions between physics and religion does nothing to aid the public understanding of Science.

Now, back to that essay I’m meant to be writing.

- Reuben

I love mince pies. If they were more widely available outside the festive months I would eat them all year. Imagine my delight therefore to discover boxes upon boxes being distributed amongst the choir and audience members after last night’s concert.

The mince pies were joined by chocolate and chatter about the concert. Politeness aside, the opinion of a friend and others seemed to be that it was of a very high quality and quite a success. Hooray!

There are some surprising intricacies to organising a concert. As well as enforcing what to sing and when, the final rehearsal included practicing standing up together, filing neatly onto stage, and a discussion of when to clap and when not to clap. Pre-concert activities included warming up our voices and pointing out just how many of the boys had visited Primark to get an inexpensive black shirt.

During the performance there was much theatre: The conductor regularly mopped his brow between pieces and disappeared off stage before the final piece for several minutes (it turned out the soloists were being fetched).

The hour and a half of concentrating on singing passed rather quickly. How time flies when you are having fun! Today I have an essay to write and a cold to get rid of, but I’m a happy chap after having sung in my first concert.

- Reuben

“Laaaaaa! Cough. Owch… Sneeze. OWCH!”

I have a dreaded combination of conditions: bruised/cracked ribs, a  cold, and the impending threat of singing in front of hundreds of people.

The ribs can be attributed to a successful Judo competition last weekend (more on that soon), the cold on being close to lots of people all the time (prospective students beware – at university colds spread quickly) and the singing on choosing to join the Imperial College Choir at the beginning of this term. My first concert looms tonight and I rather resent my body’s decision to try and block all my airways and make clearing them more painful than it should be.

So, the choir. I was presented with quite a predicament at the beginning of this year. Due to needing to have more of a life outside of rowing (and thus reluctantly not doing rowing), I found myself open to many new possibilities via the union’s 300+ societies. The current result is Judo practice 3 times a week and Choir rehearsals on a Thursday evening (and cheese society of course: occasional unlimited cheese is too good an opportunity to miss).

The choir is rather wonderful. It’s filled with lots of lovely people and it’s non auditioned:

There's a mad rush mid-rehearsal each week for tea and biscuits.

you just turn up, are given some music, stand next to someone who knows the piece, and start watching and listening to the conductor. It’s all very non-threatening to someone inexperienced like myself. I have been in a choir before, a small, fairly casual affair at 6th form. I am not however very used to understanding sheet music or singing four part pieces in Latin with a chorus of nearly 100.

I somewhat dove into the deep end. Tonight we’re performing Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Te Deum and another Te Deum by Karl Jenkins, all with an orchestra (click the link for an example). And you know what? It’s all come together. I feel like I have a much better ability to sing from music and sing notes higher than a middle c (it turns out basses don’t just belt out Barry-White-style low notes).

If I may let my Catholicism shine through for a moment, it’s also wonderful to get to singsuch beautiful religious music. After my first rehearsal I was somewhat giddy with excitement at the sound I had been a part of (“It’s like what you hear at an ACTUAL classical concert!”) and the connection to my faith is quite lovely.

So, I’m heavily dosed with paracetamol and crossing my fingers that the cold will not spread to my larynx before this evening.

I shall report back tomorrow on how it all went.

- Reuben